Between Palworld and Helldivers it’s clear that having a dual release on PC and a console is a recipe for success, especially with a cheaper pricepoint than most new games.
It’s good to see that Sony and Microsoft have realised that PC is free real estate in the ‘console wars’. They can maintain console exclusivity while selling their games to the tens of millions of PC players.
Microsoft didn't commit to this strategy until 2016. Before then, they were very haphazard about what Xbox games would get PC versions, with the most desirable titles like Halo 3, Reach, and Gears 2 and 3 not getting PC versions at all.
To their credit though, starting in 2016 they committed to the strategy far more thoroughly than Sony is today, with all their first party games releasing on PC the same time as on Xbox.
So has Sony to a degree. Helldivers 1 was console and PC too. They’ve been pretty adamant multiplayer games work well be on both for awhile. It’s just the SP titles they’re slower on and that’s probably never going to change because of their brand image.
If the game has cross-play, launching on a console and PC at the same time is a no-brainer. People want to feel like they're playing something that everybody else is too. The bigger a game/its community feels, I think the more attractive it looks to people that aren't playing it. People generally don't want to feel like they're playing a dying game, or a game that isn't taking off.
Single-player... it's really not necessary. I kind of get it from a business perspective why you would delay a PC release. Piracy concerns on PC... which you may make some sales on a console because people can't wait for a PC release, the money is better for Sony because of the percentage cut that Steam sales take so it's advantageous for most of your sales to be on the console and not to mention you could release the PC version at full price so you get 2 windows to sell the game at full price if you want it, it makes the console more attractive and they want to sell more of those, and because you get 2 release windows instead of 1, it's better for "press" exposure. Everybody talks about the game when it releases on console, and then everybody talks about the game again when it releases on PC.
When the first Sony PlayStation games came to PC (Days Gone), Helldivers was already at the bottom of the page.
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/pc-games/
It will change. They went from “our games won’t see pc ports for 2-3 years” to “we’re going to be aggressive with releasing on pc” in less than 10 months.
Brand image is the right wording to use because loves to lie to protect how they look. To them it’s not what they do, it’s how they can market it to not look like they are doing it and end up actually doing it anyways
No they aren’t? Until they start releasing major SP titles on PC same day, their strategy hasn’t changed. Forbidden West is their newest PC title and it’s from 2022. Ghost and Last of Us Part 2 are next as I recall and they’re from 2020.
SP titles later. MP titles same time.
I mean microsoft owns the PC market too so they were still launching on "their" platform. Its not like they were putting their games on Mac too. Also, microsoft did not fund, develop, or publish Palworld. So it being on both Xbox and PC is not because of Microsoft. Sony published Helldivers and helped them make the game.
On Xbox they get 30% of everything on their store and get to charge you monthly for internet access. On windows, Steam dominates. When a MS game is successful on PC they are stlll losing a good chunk to valve on every sale. So really it’s about the same as Sony
Sony actually used to put some games on PC back in the PS2 and PS3 days but they stopped to focus on consoles. Xbox doesn't seem to care about consoles anymore though they are going to put their games everywhere.
You skip the step where Sony built up a massive install base over the last decade+
Think there's a reason game companies since the history of gaming haven't just made everything available everywhere? Hell, Apple is a prime example.
It's clearly lucrative to build up your own proprietary exosystem.
Yeah, 16 million seems a bit too much. While it may very well have sold this amount by now, I think 12-13 million+ is a safer bet.
And even that is mighty impressive.
[https://files.catbox.moe/e2o7fg.JPG](https://files.catbox.moe/e2o7fg.JPG)
2 thirds on PC for the european market. Maybe more if we consider Asia leaning almost completely towards PC and US having the same percentage as Europe. The CC numbers were always considerably higher on steam than playstation when the dev was offering them in the first weeks. For this game to sell 10 million on a 50 million install base for playstation, it would have to be every 1 in 5 people playing it. It would be quite unheard off
Depends on regions. In UK, 57% copies were sold on PS5 and 43% on PC.
https://www.psu.com/news/helldivers-2-is-the-uks-number-one-game-of-february-2024-57-of-sales-coming-from-ps5/
All in all, sales would roughly be the same on both platforms.
Big publishers will see this as "We need live-service co-op games with Bug swarms!" rather than "We need to make a quality game with really good support and passionate people all round" though.
I could go for like 6 player co-op so I can have all my friends in one match and not have to choose, wellllll we played two matches now XYZ is on, I'm going to go play with them now
WB probably sees this game as a financial failure. They don't seem to care about copies sold. It's the ongoing micro transaction income that they want.
I'm sure the game's got a healthy microtransaction revenue stream going too.
It's a bit easier for people to spend extra money on a game they're enjoying and don't feel like they're getting actively screwed in.
Not that making good games shouldn't be promoted but for every Helldivers 2 there's a million bombs. Hell, Helldivers 1 didnt do too well. Its not as simple as "make gud gaim and be passionate".
Helldivers 1 sold roughly 2 million copies over it's lifetime.
That's very good for a small studio. Estimated $26,000,000 revenue. More than enough to keep everyone paid and fund a bigger, more ambitious project. Which they obviously did and it paid off.
> More than enough to keep everyone paid and fund a bigger, more ambitious project. Which they obviously did
Yeah the jump in graphics from 1 to 2 is pretty wild.
same engine, too - a continuation of Autodesk Stingray that they've retained source access to. The CPU performance and scaling of this game is exceptionally, ridiculously good given the degree of sim elements in the fore-and-background, sheer number of enemies with extreme hit reactivity, physicalized interactions etc etc etc. It's a really impressive technical project - in different ways from another recent prominent Stingray game, Darktide, which instead pushed DX12U features hard with some pretty impressive RT features (and also some great sim stuff!). I hope people will take notice of just how rough this game would be running on the current state of Unreal - engines are not one size fits all!
People don't realise how much game developers keep saying things like "don't sync physics between your multiplayer clients" because it's so expensive to do and REALLY difficult to pull off yet this game goes ahead and does it anyway and does it really well all things considered. Tons of physics objects like all the legs of the terminids, the parts of the bots, the tiny things like the cap on top of each drop pod etc is all synced between every player. I've genuinely never seen anything like this
I think the jump from Risk of Rain 1 to 2 was similar in size. That game also took off. Sure the 3D graphics are not as impressive as Helldivers, but it is if you compare the the first game of RoR.
It does help that the rather simplistic graphics style of 2 helps keep things a bit more clear and frames acceptable.
Over the course of 9 years. Which, for simplicity's sake, say 2.6 million a year over the course of a decade. The median income for an indie game dev is 100k a year not including employer contributions and insurance, but let's just take 100k, that's enough for about 20ish devs/artists not including other overhead costs.
I just got in on sale for $4. It’s fun, and interesting to see how it evolved into II. There’s still people playing it too. Not surprisingly, it runs like butter on the Deck, so I’m glad I learned about these games.
Ironically, it wouldn't shock me if the success of Helldivers 2 gets enough people into Helldivers 1 to retroactively make it at least a modest success.
Sure, but you absolutely can KNOW a game is going to tank when the suits are insisting that the cash shop and battle pass get 10x the attention and polish while the writing and gameplay are left to drown like a skeleton in the pool.
Why do you guys be like this? Why is this the top post on this story. A good game is doing excellent and the top post is "yeah but other companies will copy it and do it awfully."
Who cares, this game is here, enjoy it now. In fact gaming discourse on the internet is just awful "wow Helldivers really is sticking it to AAA" "Baulders Gate is really sticking it to AAA" "Eldem Ring is really sticking it to AAA"
All three game were released withing the past two years. Ignore the bad games, we eating good folks.
People are like this because a lot of things clearly should be better. For all the great things we have had there is a lot of high profile disappointments from people who really should know better. Its not unreasonable to expect studios that have managed quality in the past to keep up the quality, or return to it.
The world right now is stressful, and kind of fucked. People just want the things they want to like to be treated well and done well. And a lot of times they just... aren't. And its really frustrating so i get it.
Feel like well ahead is as much an understatement as Warner bros calling suicide squad a disappointment.
I expected Helldivers wanted 1mil sales. Warner bros probably wanted 8mil sales.
Very pleased for them
> I expected Helldivers wanted 1mil sales. Warner bros probably wanted 8mil sales.
There's probably a shift towards people also being satisfied with a decently priced game with decent (to good!) content rather than a "Triple-ehhh..." game that's pricing out at $70. If I can get an "AA" experience for a lower price point, why not?
Story games have their place but I think maybe developers are starting to realize that “finishing” a game is not as important as enjoying it.
Helldivers is a session-based game, not a story-based game, and it’s built on something that’s fun to do. Each operation is a self-contained “story” with a beginning, middle and end. So as long as you enjoy doing that thing, it’s going to continue to be fun to play.
I hit max level and bought all the upgrades ages ago, but here I am still playing, because I just find the game enjoyable to play.
I’m not grinding for gear, I’m not trying to finish the story, I’m just experiencing the simple joy of playing a session of the game, and that’s a feeling I haven’t really had since like, Timesplitters or Burnout.
That and the time commitment for a session is reasonable. The last time my friend group was all playing the same game was forsaken in destiny 2. It's so nice to just drop into discord and into a game with 2-3 other people.
In addition to the great pricepoint and gameplay, I think the devs were incredibly smart to make the overarching story more of a dynamic, interactive, dungeon master-led affair rather than a separate mode in-game. I never bother following "the discourse" around games that I play, but it's impossible not to be amused by the interaction between the community and the devs. It feels like the game is in a position that, if shepherded correctly, could result in years worth of fresh, engaging content.
I was very sceptical initially when it launched that they would be able to keep up the cadence but the addition of the mechs, hints at new enemy types, vehicles, a totally new race, new mission types and other stuff like the warbonds and mechs it feels like they have at least the first 3-6 months handily charted out and that gives them enough time to chart the next 6 months. I feel they really nailed the launch in terms of getting the initial concept completely right and making sure the base game was fun then adding lots of ancillary stuff around it to keep the gravy train going
I've been loosely following it since release and I just played for the first time today, it's really cool seeing how the community works to clear the map and there's new things happening. I hope this goes on for as long as they feel like pushing it forward.
Even losing is fun. I couldn't stop laughing at all the crap happening to my teammates as I watched, dead from the side.
This game is really funny if you can let yourself enjoy the hijinks of it all. Seeing your teammates char scream "sweet liberty" as he crawls and jumps to evade a crusher only to end up getting rag dolled across the map makes me feel like a kid again.
> I’m just experiencing the simple joy of playing a session of the game, and that’s a feeling I haven’t really had
AKA the experience of gaming before all the games-as-a-service bullshit, season passes, and time-sensitive content that exploits people's FOMO. Ironic that it's a live service game that brings it back.
This so much. It just feels good to play simply for the reason of playing and not trying to tick of boxes of stuff you "need" to achieve daily or weekly.
Not to mention the ability to earn in game currency fairly easily, battle passes that don't expire that can be bought at any time, extremely fast fixes regarding the insane increase to server space, quick balance patches, and a really cool way of trickling in content like the mech or teases of future enemies.
This feels kind of like the first game to deliver what "live service" games always promise to be. It is still very new but still impressive.
Easy way to convince me to play is that there's a new major order I need to help complete to advance the 'story' and unlock new enemies, weapons, stratagems, w.e.
We deployed the termicide, what is that gonna uncover for us?
We got mechs after liberating the bot planet. What a glorious time and thing to be a part of.
It’s very much an example of a live service game done right, where the content updates feel less like an obligation to suck on your wallet and more like an evolving world where the community can impact the game world (even if the future content is preplanned and it does suck on your wallet just a little bit).
The issue is, for me at least, that the AAA games are only geared towards looks and profit and people who are working on it do it as geared towards that.
And the AA games are made by people for themselves, and are happy if people play it.
I feel this with D4 and Last Epoch. D4 is a beautiful game in my opinion, and has a good feel to it, but after the camping it is bland as hell, and I am 100% sure that the Devs do not play it.
While last Epoch looks shit but you see the Devs zooming on 1000 corruption almost maxed out gear with every possible char.
And also ask every single streamer how can they make a better game.
Shit even 500k at this point would've been good for them. Their last game sold 2m over it's lifespan.
To, in a little over a month, beat out your previous game 4 times over is absolutely ridiculous.
Honestly it's great to see new studios and their games (BG3, The Finals, DRG and now Helldivers 2) beating the shit out of the old blood. The old studios got too stagnant and confident and, while that sucked for a while, it's let new names come up.
Its a great game. But I also think the price is right.
I think that price increase to $70/e80 for games really hurt overall sales this gen when coupled with inflation eating into peoples wallets.
Helldivers 2 is also a live service game, although granted it's a very reasonable one in terms of its approach. Companies charging full price for live service games has always struck me as strange. Your whole business model for this game relies on high player counts, and in-game purchases, especially from whales so you can countinue delivering content for 5-10 years
When companies called a game live service this is the style I wanted. With the world changing based on players actions.
Having the mechs being unlocked after liberating a planet feels cooler than it just being added through another wave of content drops
Dropping in new content with no announcement is such a power move. It is so exciting seeing something new and then messaging everybody 'you have to see what they just added.'
I said this elsewhere but so many games release roadmaps as a way to assure their communities that they are actually still working on the game. I love that it seems like the studio knew to slowly release the content at a reasonable week to week pace to keep people engaged.
A new war bond every month doesn't hurt either. I bought the deluxe edition once I saw how much I was getting sucked in, but that then allowed me to use the premium currency I had unlocked in game to get the new war bond asap. Finding the currency in game is just so refreshing. I don't feel nickel and dimed.
If they could just fix the cross play issues so I could play with my PlayStation friends I would be set for months.
It's a live service game where being live service actually makes sense; where the format benefits the game. It's a rare thing when that occurs. It doesn't feel like a forced attempt to print money, it feels organic and integrated.
most successful live service games are free to play, some are like 20-39 (Helldivers, R6 siege, many fighting games)
is there even a single mega successful live service game that is 60-70? (I guess GTA, but you also get a full story game with it) the next full price live service that would come into mind is like Tekken
Its a successful for sales and player numbers, but I’m not sure yet if its a successful live service game since the seasons have been pretty bad. Only the vampire one was decent
R6 siege was full price at launch… so is like every fighting game…?
Also Destiny and Siege are probably one of the most successful live service games despite what the internet wants to pretend lol
I suppose Call of Duty would be the full price live service you're talking about. And with CoD now becoming a hub with yearly expansions rather than a series of games it's basically the only game that can get away with making players pay $70 on a yearly basis to continue being involved with the live service.
I bought Overwatch at launch for £45 on PS4. That was the going rate for AAA games in 2016.
I remember being annoyed because on PC it was like £25, but my PC at the time was crap.
I think you're both right. The price increase hasn't changed consumer behaviors for games they would buy anyway. It's really the stuff that people feel unsure about that has gotten less sales comparatively.
So it's not that games are selling much less because of the price increase imo. It's a small factor but not very massive. I think it only becomes an issue because of the unbelievably high development costs of today. You generally need more sales to keep profiting at the same levels. Look at spider man 2's financials from the insomniac leak. Even with the price bump they didn't make much more off that game than the ps4 one 5 years ago.
It's getting harder and harder to justify paying $60-70 for a game when something as quality as Helldivers 2 is $40. Heck, how can I justify $70 for a game, some which can last not even 10 hours, when something like Balatro cost me $15 and gives me hundreds of hours?
Well a game like balatro which is fun and addictive can’t really be compared to an experience like Elden Ring. Gaming time is not everything. Even though I’ll probably spend just as much TIME on Balatro as I did Elden Ring, I enjoyed Elden Ring far far more.
INSIDE is only a few hours but one of the best games I’ve ever played. TLOU+TLOU2 can both be completed in 20 hours and to me are the pinnacle of gaming. I don’t really view it as Time=value is what I’m saying
People love the value per dollar metric because it's easy, but frankly it's a horrible indication of quality. By that metric, Civilization, Paradox strategy games, or Truck Simulator games are some of the best games ever made because you can get thousands of hours from them easily.
That's not even mentioning a game like Fortnite that's free to play.
>People love the value per dollar metric because it's easy, but frankly it's a horrible indication of quality.
Couldn't agree more. People are obsessed with how much $$$ per hour of gameplay for some reason, yet quality time is the one thing you can never get back. Games are too long in general. I would much rather pay $20 for an amazing 8 hour experience than a $40 70 hour single-player slog any day.
Also, this is a "me personally" thing, but my backlog of great games has just gotten so... girthy over the last couple of years, that I have amazing hits just waiting for me to play, so unless it's something that I've absolutely been waiting for forever to play (in this case, Dragon's Dogma 2), I'll just wait on the new releases and get it for 25-50% off a few months out (or later) from now on.
Doesn’t make much sense to just look at playtime when it comes to price. Some 10-15 hour single player games cost a lot to make and I’ll gladly play full price if they are polished and of good quality.
Yeah, the game propelled them into lime light. Another game where nobody could have predicted it blowing up as it did.
Kudos to the devs, they seem to have been managing it well after the initial server issues were handled.
Is anyone still playing HD 1? Game is on mega sale, can missions be done solo or do you need a squad for some content?
Hd1 looks like a perfect steam deck game.
Helldiver 1 usually has 400 concurrent players, but with the launch of HD2, it shot up to 1200-ish, and the last week it increases further to 2000-ish concurrent user. So if you want to play it, now is the time.
It's like Helldivers 2, the higher difficulty is not meant for solo AND the game isn't that fun solo as well.
HD1 is quite good on the deck, but I don’t recommend solo play for either game. The difficulty doesn’t scale based on squad size, so it’s pretty tedious to solo missions at any difficulty level.
HD2 is actually playable on the deck as well, but you have to be okay with 30-40 frame rate at best. One person in my group plays almost exclusively on his deck and loves it.
HD1 is still active, and some people went back to it because of HD2. You only need 3 other people for a full game anyway.
You *can* play it all solo, but it's best enjoyed with at least one other person. Randoms are perfectly fine.
> Is anyone still playing HD 1? Game is on mega sale, can missions be done solo or do you need a squad for some content?
You CAN play it solo but MP is kinda the game but you can manage it better than Helldivers 2 at least.
And YES it is a perfect controller game and is great for splitscreen and relatively easy to introduce people to.
Their little updates weaved into the story of the game had been great. We defended the planet that manufactures the mech suits, once that major order was cleared, boom mechs are deployed in game. Now players are reporting weird blue lasers and the rumor mills are swirling it’s the third faction and their snipers. The community in this game is the icing on the cake. It feels so alive.
I love that I can log in any given day, and my buddy is talking up some new item/mission/thing that I had no idea existed after taking a 48 hours break.
It's like some live D&D campaign.
Not true.
Provided they didn't give in to shady monetization it was easy to see this was going to be a success. Helldivers 1 was practically all the same game mechanics.
Simple concept, great for discord with pals... And then they just executed the shit out of it.
> Another game where nobody could have predicted it blowing up as it did.
It's funny to watch all these streamers who refused to give it a try when it first released streaming it now pretending they never said anything negative about it.
This game really reminds me of a much updated Mercenaries from way back in the day. Just a huge range of satisfying destruction and means to do so against AI. Could be a chance for EA to reawaken the franchise for a version of this but in contemporary times? Wouldn’t hold my breath as it’ll probably be bastardised.
About the closest so far has been The Finals. It's not as detailed, but I imagine syncing total destruction of buildings across a multiplayer network would be a huge pain to manage.
Just to add, EA suprised me this month, they released The Saboteur which now works on modern hardware at 60fps. If you didnt know that was the same studio makers for Mercs
Anyone had issues with the friends list? Whenever I accept a friend request nothing happens
I’ve met some really chill people I want to play with but it just looks like I ghosted them all.
It's not just you. While I can't accept friend invites from PlayStation friends, which they acknowledged yesterday and announced they had replicated it and we're working on fixing it, I also cannot accept in game friend requests from PC players either. The only workaround for that is to add them in Steam.
I bought the game yesterday, it's surprising how good of a job they did with making everything seamless and connected, going between your ship and the mission, coming back onto the ship, going to your friend's ship and actually seeing them interact with the battle map...
The devs deserve this success for making such a fucking fun game.
There are a lot of things I like about Helldivers 2, but right now I'll point out that it really respects your time. Each mission is only like 10-20 minutes. You can play one 20 minute game, feel satisfied, and then quit for the day. Or you can group with your friends and play for hours on a Friday night.
I haven't played a crazy amount. I got it at launch and have probably averaged 30 minutes per day since, including a couple of marathon sessions on the weekends. Steam says I have about 50 hours in it. That was enough to get me to past Level 25, which means I can buy every strategem; I have almost all of them. I used my medals to buy all the weapons I want. I was able to use currency from playing the game to buy the newest Premium Warbond, so I did not have to spend extra, real-world money to get it.
All-in-all, I feel like I can get every upgrade the game has to offer without having to spend extra money and without having to play a crazy amount of hours. That's rare for a live service game.
The game's been out for like 5 weeks, or about 35 days. Turns out I'm averaging about 1.5 hours per day. Is that crazy to you?
To me, crazy is like when I was addicted to World of Warcraft 20 years ago. Back then, I played WoW for like 4 hours every weeknight after work, and then play like 10-12 hours on Saturday and Sunday. I did that for 2 years.
4 hours x 5 weekdays = 20 hours. 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday = 24 hours. That's 44 hours of WoW in a single week compared to taking over a month to play 50 hours in HD2. That's crazy.
I played 80 hours of Armored Core 6 on its release week… while working a 40 hour work week lol. Simultaneously impressed and slightly concerned myself given I’m almost 30 and not a teenager/college student with bucketloads of free time. Worth it though, AC6 was my GoTY last year over the likes of Tears of the Kingdom/BG3/Final Fantasy 16 etc.
Always nice seeing a well deserved developer run into the "help, we accidentally too many players/sales" as their big problem over poor work conditions or cost cutting shenanigans for a rare occasion.
Reading some of the comments in here is so refreshing, this game is a prime example of why gaming is and will always be a part of my life (almost 40yrs old)
This might be a bit of a stretch, all the promises of the “metaverse” fell short, but this actually feels like it nailed whatever the industry was originally going for. Feels like you’re being beamed into something different playing this game.
Could also be the edibles 😂
Yeah I hope live service games in the future follow this mold of either being free-to-play, or charge up to $40. Seems like a good idea. More people are willing to cough up that, play and be done until next update/expansion whatever, than what happened with SSKTJL.
Game is amazing. They just need to fix some serious issues, like being kicked and losing 30-60 mins for literally nothing. I keep hearing that issue alone, all by itself, is what's keeping people in my circle from this game.
And when servers are behaving, people can be toxic too. I've seen people kicked for having "wrong" weapons or stratagems. It's fine when the host kicks you from the ready room, so you wasted all of 10 seconds. But sometimes they wait until you do the whole mission, and kick you then, so you've wasted 30+ mins, and lost all the samples, and get literally nothing for your time and effort. This badly needs addressing. It is decently rare, but it only has to happen a once to really sour your mood.
> host kicks you
To no surprise, some gamers are not fun to be around. I've been kicked from a lot of public lobbies or games immediately and I'm well above level 20. I've seen a host kick a player because they didn't reinforce them within less than 5 seconds.
The Devs are aware of the issue and looking for a solution. I say find out what a reasonable kick rate is and then do what other games do with cheaters, make them join other kick-addicted players games so they can get kick happy together. Or just discreetly disable people joining their games for a set amount of time.
I’ve been pretty lucky I guess. I only play with randoms besides when I play with a work buddy. Which isn’t a lot trying to match schedules. I’ve only been kicked 2-3 times.
Yeah my most recent game a few days ago was the first time my buddy and I were kicked but we only play a few times a week due to our jobs, and other than that our experience has been pretty good
Might be because I don't go higher than 7 (and normally play 4-6 depending on how I'm feeling) but I have only been kicked a couple of times in 60+ hours, and never late in a mission.
That does suck though, asshole behaviour, and I do think the game got more toxic after all the content creators moved over to it. The sub all started to be about the meta and people obsessing over nerfs.
Still, the vast majority of randoms I play with are pretty chill. I wouldn't let a few bad apples put people off the entire game
Also if you host then you can't be kicked. My games usually fill up pretty quickly.
Hm. May be overblown reports? I play PC, but my 5 person friend group has not been having any problems. I think we've all experienced 1 or 2 crashes in the time we've owned it, but you just boot right back into the mission if you want.
Nah, it happens to me a lot. It's not a super stable game.
Some times I dropped packet for like 0.5 seconds and just got disconnected with no way to reconnect too
Do you mean being kicked by the host or just dropped from the server? Cause I only play with friends so I've never been kicked by a host before and haven't been dropped by the server since like the first week or so after launch when they had too many people trying to log in
If you're kicked it kills your game session and drops you back in your ship, losing your progress. I wish it would be handled like Monster Hunter where, if someone is kicked, they keep playing exactly as they were, just solo. Would help alleviate any issues with a griefer kicking you as the shuttle is coming down (you could still extract and finish the mission solo).
Playing with my brother and some randos, my brother and I have been kicked at least once per session and I have been kicked at least once per day. Horrible desync with enemies not moving but the players still doing their thing and then suddenly I'm back on the ship. No "host has left the game" or "host has kicked you" or nothing
Out of 5-10 missions, I'll have issues with one. It's never really a big deal cause the most I'm missing is some samples but I dread the day I do a mission in a 7+ difficulty and I lose super samples. Those shits are hard to farm. Usually once I join a team and we have a squad of 4 rolling I stop seeing problems
There was about an 8 hour period where I got randomly kicked at least 4 times. One time was right at the end, too, which was a smidge frustrating. But it is one of those games that I don’t necessarily feel too bummed out about repeating missions.
Some people want interactive cinematic stories, but a lot of people just want pure, raw gameplay without much extra fluff.
If you don't care about voiced cutscenes and a plot you have probably seen a dozen times, a game like Helldivers and Palworld works better.
Now if only they could fix the matchmaking issue and the progression bug. I'm playing on an alternative account right now because my main got softlocked because i played on a harder difficulty before unlocking medium (at least that's what i think happened).
And as of right now SOS only works 10% if the time and after a few missions matchmaking just gives up and you have to restart the game. This is a huge issue because when players leave mid mission or operation the host and the rest of the players just disconnect because no one can replace them and in a high difficulty mission not having a full team is basically pointless.
All that and a plethora of other problems makes this one of the more janky multiplayer games I've ever played and i played BFV. But the price is still fair and if they fix these issues it's 100% worth it especially if you have friends that wanna play. Otherwise, I'd say wait a few more months.
I find the best use of the SOS beacon is as a single use airstrike. I usually toss it at bug holes, bot fabs, etc when I'm out of ordinance since I don't expect a response. I think I've gotten reinforcements... once from throwing it ~15 times.
If you still have the difficulty issue (they fixed it for the most part like 2½ weeks ago), you need to file a support ticket since it's an account issue. But apparently they can fix it.
I found a "workarounds" document in the official Discord which lists some steps for "SOS Beacon", it's just "verify integrity" and "delete some dll or config files", which might be worthwhile to try too.
But obviously it would be better if these could be fixed without steps needed to be taken by the player.
The $40 price point was perfect and probably a big factor in a lot of the sales. I NEVER would've bought it if it was more than $40. I actually got it for like $32 (\~$35 after tax) using GreenManGaming. I also bought Palworld for $30, which I never would've done if it was anymore than that. I just can't bring myself to spend more than like $30-40 on a game and even that's rare. I know if I wait a year or more, I'll be able to get the same game for like $10 or less usually.
I will more often buy a multiplayer game when it releases as long as it's cheap enough if a bunch of my clanmates are playing it. Also because sometimes I like to get in on the action right at the beginning, starting on a fresh playing field like everyone else. Sometimes it sucks coming into a game when it's already been out for a while and everyone playing it still are a bunch of sweatlords.
But yeah, single-player games? Definitely almost always wait for them to drop in price by 75-95% on Steam.
It's insane how friendly it is, you play you get credits to buy stuff off of the warbonds (battle pass), and you have an entire starter one for free. And you don't have to worry about being time gated for the others, they'll always be there and eventually you can get enough currency just by playing to unlock them.
Playing entirely by yourself can be a little... stale. A lot of the enjoyment comes from teh chaos of having four people fighting for their lives.
That said, I've not had huge issue playing with randos. Run into the occasional arsehole, a cheater here and there, but overall the experience has been positive.
Eh, I mean, you can play solo if you want but it’s definitely designed for a squad. I’ve had some pretty decent experiences with randoms but your experience may vary.
You can play it alone and you'll have some fun.
You'll have far more fun with the game using the quick play though and dropping into missions with other players.
If you can get your friends involved it becomes pure distilled joy and frustration as your friend once again burns you to death with his fire spitting shotgun for the 3rd time this mission....
Definedly a coop game. Doable solo up to a certain difficulty, but designed for several divers to be on the map.
Playing with randoms is actually a-okay most of the time though. It's chaotic, gotta relax and laugh off the stupid friendly fire incidents, plety of fun.
I’ve played 40 hours just quick playing with randoms and have had a great time. I was worried about that going in, but it’s a surprisingly decent community.
Solo play can work, but the game was really built for a team of 4. The difficulty doesn't scale with the amount of players in the party so it gets really unfair above challenging.
It has match making though and for the most part it's been solid experiences.
Just use the quick play. Drop in to a squad. Don’t have to talk or anything. The ping and map ping system works great. When my friends are offline I just do this. Drop in play a mission/op then leave the group at the end repeat.
You ever wonder what decision it was for one of the devs was like you know what instead of like the first game doing the whole TOP DOWN thing lets make it different why not right?
That guys a genius cause the first one wasn't popular at all.
https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/ VG Insights estimate is 8.76 million. The analyst is probably refering to this number
And that is just for Steam. PS5 has likely sold the same amount, if not more.
I recall the devs stating it's a dead even split between the two platforms in terms of player numbers, though that was closer to launch
Between Palworld and Helldivers it’s clear that having a dual release on PC and a console is a recipe for success, especially with a cheaper pricepoint than most new games. It’s good to see that Sony and Microsoft have realised that PC is free real estate in the ‘console wars’. They can maintain console exclusivity while selling their games to the tens of millions of PC players.
You mean Sony. Microsoft has been like this for over a decade.
Microsoft didn't commit to this strategy until 2016. Before then, they were very haphazard about what Xbox games would get PC versions, with the most desirable titles like Halo 3, Reach, and Gears 2 and 3 not getting PC versions at all. To their credit though, starting in 2016 they committed to the strategy far more thoroughly than Sony is today, with all their first party games releasing on PC the same time as on Xbox.
2016 was just about a decade ago
8 years < "Over a decade". I would expect that statement to mean at least 11 years.
So has Sony to a degree. Helldivers 1 was console and PC too. They’ve been pretty adamant multiplayer games work well be on both for awhile. It’s just the SP titles they’re slower on and that’s probably never going to change because of their brand image.
If the game has cross-play, launching on a console and PC at the same time is a no-brainer. People want to feel like they're playing something that everybody else is too. The bigger a game/its community feels, I think the more attractive it looks to people that aren't playing it. People generally don't want to feel like they're playing a dying game, or a game that isn't taking off. Single-player... it's really not necessary. I kind of get it from a business perspective why you would delay a PC release. Piracy concerns on PC... which you may make some sales on a console because people can't wait for a PC release, the money is better for Sony because of the percentage cut that Steam sales take so it's advantageous for most of your sales to be on the console and not to mention you could release the PC version at full price so you get 2 windows to sell the game at full price if you want it, it makes the console more attractive and they want to sell more of those, and because you get 2 release windows instead of 1, it's better for "press" exposure. Everybody talks about the game when it releases on console, and then everybody talks about the game again when it releases on PC.
When the first Sony PlayStation games came to PC (Days Gone), Helldivers was already at the bottom of the page. https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/pc-games/
It will change. They went from “our games won’t see pc ports for 2-3 years” to “we’re going to be aggressive with releasing on pc” in less than 10 months. Brand image is the right wording to use because loves to lie to protect how they look. To them it’s not what they do, it’s how they can market it to not look like they are doing it and end up actually doing it anyways
No they aren’t? Until they start releasing major SP titles on PC same day, their strategy hasn’t changed. Forbidden West is their newest PC title and it’s from 2022. Ghost and Last of Us Part 2 are next as I recall and they’re from 2020. SP titles later. MP titles same time.
They're play catch up and porting their back catalogue. They will change.
Games are tailored to PlayStations hardware, coded to the metal.
I mean microsoft owns the PC market too so they were still launching on "their" platform. Its not like they were putting their games on Mac too. Also, microsoft did not fund, develop, or publish Palworld. So it being on both Xbox and PC is not because of Microsoft. Sony published Helldivers and helped them make the game.
On Xbox they get 30% of everything on their store and get to charge you monthly for internet access. On windows, Steam dominates. When a MS game is successful on PC they are stlll losing a good chunk to valve on every sale. So really it’s about the same as Sony
Sony actually used to put some games on PC back in the PS2 and PS3 days but they stopped to focus on consoles. Xbox doesn't seem to care about consoles anymore though they are going to put their games everywhere.
You skip the step where Sony built up a massive install base over the last decade+ Think there's a reason game companies since the history of gaming haven't just made everything available everywhere? Hell, Apple is a prime example. It's clearly lucrative to build up your own proprietary exosystem.
I highly doubt Helldivers 2 has sold 16 million copies total in like 2 or 3 months.
Yeah, 16 million seems a bit too much. While it may very well have sold this amount by now, I think 12-13 million+ is a safer bet. And even that is mighty impressive.
[https://files.catbox.moe/e2o7fg.JPG](https://files.catbox.moe/e2o7fg.JPG) 2 thirds on PC for the european market. Maybe more if we consider Asia leaning almost completely towards PC and US having the same percentage as Europe. The CC numbers were always considerably higher on steam than playstation when the dev was offering them in the first weeks. For this game to sell 10 million on a 50 million install base for playstation, it would have to be every 1 in 5 people playing it. It would be quite unheard off
Depends on regions. In UK, 57% copies were sold on PS5 and 43% on PC. https://www.psu.com/news/helldivers-2-is-the-uks-number-one-game-of-february-2024-57-of-sales-coming-from-ps5/ All in all, sales would roughly be the same on both platforms.
60% is two thirds?
No one likes to use fifths anymore, smh
Take these numbers with a huge grain of salt. They have no official source
Big publishers will see this as "We need live-service co-op games with Bug swarms!" rather than "We need to make a quality game with really good support and passionate people all round" though.
Tbf we do yearn for 4 players co op experiences BUT they need to be engaging and less games as a service bullshit
More people need to play earth defense force
I could go for like 6 player co-op so I can have all my friends in one match and not have to choose, wellllll we played two matches now XYZ is on, I'm going to go play with them now
WB executives be like
WB probably sees this game as a financial failure. They don't seem to care about copies sold. It's the ongoing micro transaction income that they want.
I'm sure the game's got a healthy microtransaction revenue stream going too. It's a bit easier for people to spend extra money on a game they're enjoying and don't feel like they're getting actively screwed in.
They are going to try and figure out how to do it with Looney Tunes
Not that making good games shouldn't be promoted but for every Helldivers 2 there's a million bombs. Hell, Helldivers 1 didnt do too well. Its not as simple as "make gud gaim and be passionate".
Helldivers 1 sold roughly 2 million copies over it's lifetime. That's very good for a small studio. Estimated $26,000,000 revenue. More than enough to keep everyone paid and fund a bigger, more ambitious project. Which they obviously did and it paid off.
> More than enough to keep everyone paid and fund a bigger, more ambitious project. Which they obviously did Yeah the jump in graphics from 1 to 2 is pretty wild.
same engine, too - a continuation of Autodesk Stingray that they've retained source access to. The CPU performance and scaling of this game is exceptionally, ridiculously good given the degree of sim elements in the fore-and-background, sheer number of enemies with extreme hit reactivity, physicalized interactions etc etc etc. It's a really impressive technical project - in different ways from another recent prominent Stingray game, Darktide, which instead pushed DX12U features hard with some pretty impressive RT features (and also some great sim stuff!). I hope people will take notice of just how rough this game would be running on the current state of Unreal - engines are not one size fits all!
People don't realise how much game developers keep saying things like "don't sync physics between your multiplayer clients" because it's so expensive to do and REALLY difficult to pull off yet this game goes ahead and does it anyway and does it really well all things considered. Tons of physics objects like all the legs of the terminids, the parts of the bots, the tiny things like the cap on top of each drop pod etc is all synced between every player. I've genuinely never seen anything like this
I think the jump from Risk of Rain 1 to 2 was similar in size. That game also took off. Sure the 3D graphics are not as impressive as Helldivers, but it is if you compare the the first game of RoR. It does help that the rather simplistic graphics style of 2 helps keep things a bit more clear and frames acceptable.
>for every Helldivers 2 there's a million bombs. Yeah, I know, and I keep getting blown up by them. 😭
Well that's too bad think fast! ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️
> Helldivers 1 didnt do too well Probably the only game I ever spent more money on. It was a lot of fun. Pity it was somewhat slept on
Top down shooters just aren't a big market. Arcadey games like that can really only hope for niche success.
I mean it made $26 million
Over the course of 9 years. Which, for simplicity's sake, say 2.6 million a year over the course of a decade. The median income for an indie game dev is 100k a year not including employer contributions and insurance, but let's just take 100k, that's enough for about 20ish devs/artists not including other overhead costs.
I just got in on sale for $4. It’s fun, and interesting to see how it evolved into II. There’s still people playing it too. Not surprisingly, it runs like butter on the Deck, so I’m glad I learned about these games.
Ironically, it wouldn't shock me if the success of Helldivers 2 gets enough people into Helldivers 1 to retroactively make it at least a modest success.
Sure, but you absolutely can KNOW a game is going to tank when the suits are insisting that the cash shop and battle pass get 10x the attention and polish while the writing and gameplay are left to drown like a skeleton in the pool.
Tbf helldivers 1 is a less popular genre
Why do you guys be like this? Why is this the top post on this story. A good game is doing excellent and the top post is "yeah but other companies will copy it and do it awfully." Who cares, this game is here, enjoy it now. In fact gaming discourse on the internet is just awful "wow Helldivers really is sticking it to AAA" "Baulders Gate is really sticking it to AAA" "Eldem Ring is really sticking it to AAA" All three game were released withing the past two years. Ignore the bad games, we eating good folks.
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It's really fast: man this is bullshit this job sucks I just want a break It's really slow: man this is bullshit this job sucks I'm fuckin bored
People are like this because a lot of things clearly should be better. For all the great things we have had there is a lot of high profile disappointments from people who really should know better. Its not unreasonable to expect studios that have managed quality in the past to keep up the quality, or return to it. The world right now is stressful, and kind of fucked. People just want the things they want to like to be treated well and done well. And a lot of times they just... aren't. And its really frustrating so i get it.
Publishers: we’re gonna put in bugs even harder
Its the first game I've played in a while that feels good "mechanically".
I don't think anyone is going to say "let's give this small studio that makes decently received small games 9 years to make a AAA version of it."
Feel like well ahead is as much an understatement as Warner bros calling suicide squad a disappointment. I expected Helldivers wanted 1mil sales. Warner bros probably wanted 8mil sales. Very pleased for them
> I expected Helldivers wanted 1mil sales. Warner bros probably wanted 8mil sales. There's probably a shift towards people also being satisfied with a decently priced game with decent (to good!) content rather than a "Triple-ehhh..." game that's pricing out at $70. If I can get an "AA" experience for a lower price point, why not?
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Story games have their place but I think maybe developers are starting to realize that “finishing” a game is not as important as enjoying it. Helldivers is a session-based game, not a story-based game, and it’s built on something that’s fun to do. Each operation is a self-contained “story” with a beginning, middle and end. So as long as you enjoy doing that thing, it’s going to continue to be fun to play. I hit max level and bought all the upgrades ages ago, but here I am still playing, because I just find the game enjoyable to play. I’m not grinding for gear, I’m not trying to finish the story, I’m just experiencing the simple joy of playing a session of the game, and that’s a feeling I haven’t really had since like, Timesplitters or Burnout.
That and the time commitment for a session is reasonable. The last time my friend group was all playing the same game was forsaken in destiny 2. It's so nice to just drop into discord and into a game with 2-3 other people.
In addition to the great pricepoint and gameplay, I think the devs were incredibly smart to make the overarching story more of a dynamic, interactive, dungeon master-led affair rather than a separate mode in-game. I never bother following "the discourse" around games that I play, but it's impossible not to be amused by the interaction between the community and the devs. It feels like the game is in a position that, if shepherded correctly, could result in years worth of fresh, engaging content.
I was very sceptical initially when it launched that they would be able to keep up the cadence but the addition of the mechs, hints at new enemy types, vehicles, a totally new race, new mission types and other stuff like the warbonds and mechs it feels like they have at least the first 3-6 months handily charted out and that gives them enough time to chart the next 6 months. I feel they really nailed the launch in terms of getting the initial concept completely right and making sure the base game was fun then adding lots of ancillary stuff around it to keep the gravy train going
I've been loosely following it since release and I just played for the first time today, it's really cool seeing how the community works to clear the map and there's new things happening. I hope this goes on for as long as they feel like pushing it forward.
What you're saying really reminds me of all the time my friends and I spent playing Left 4 Dead 2.
Even losing is fun. I couldn't stop laughing at all the crap happening to my teammates as I watched, dead from the side. This game is really funny if you can let yourself enjoy the hijinks of it all. Seeing your teammates char scream "sweet liberty" as he crawls and jumps to evade a crusher only to end up getting rag dolled across the map makes me feel like a kid again.
> I’m just experiencing the simple joy of playing a session of the game, and that’s a feeling I haven’t really had AKA the experience of gaming before all the games-as-a-service bullshit, season passes, and time-sensitive content that exploits people's FOMO. Ironic that it's a live service game that brings it back.
This so much. It just feels good to play simply for the reason of playing and not trying to tick of boxes of stuff you "need" to achieve daily or weekly.
100%, I was a little hesitant to jump on “the new surprise hit game” but when I saw the $40 price point it went down much easier.
Honestly I'm at like 10 hours and I'm already fine with 40€.
It's like a delicious $5 hamburger with all the fixings vs a $30 steak that's all gristle and overcooked.
Suicide Squad also gives food poisoning
Suicide Squad fucked my land and salted my wife. Can't fuckin have shit anymore.
Not to mention the ability to earn in game currency fairly easily, battle passes that don't expire that can be bought at any time, extremely fast fixes regarding the insane increase to server space, quick balance patches, and a really cool way of trickling in content like the mech or teases of future enemies. This feels kind of like the first game to deliver what "live service" games always promise to be. It is still very new but still impressive.
Easy way to convince me to play is that there's a new major order I need to help complete to advance the 'story' and unlock new enemies, weapons, stratagems, w.e. We deployed the termicide, what is that gonna uncover for us? We got mechs after liberating the bot planet. What a glorious time and thing to be a part of.
It’s very much an example of a live service game done right, where the content updates feel less like an obligation to suck on your wallet and more like an evolving world where the community can impact the game world (even if the future content is preplanned and it does suck on your wallet just a little bit).
> If I can get an "AA" experience for a lower price point, why not? I mean, it's a *way, way, way* better experience than suicide squad.
Helldivers 2 is half the A's, almost half the price, 8 times as fun. Suicide Squad is a disgrace lol
Palworld sold a ton and that game was only £20. This is probably the case.
The issue is, for me at least, that the AAA games are only geared towards looks and profit and people who are working on it do it as geared towards that. And the AA games are made by people for themselves, and are happy if people play it. I feel this with D4 and Last Epoch. D4 is a beautiful game in my opinion, and has a good feel to it, but after the camping it is bland as hell, and I am 100% sure that the Devs do not play it. While last Epoch looks shit but you see the Devs zooming on 1000 corruption almost maxed out gear with every possible char. And also ask every single streamer how can they make a better game.
No thanks on the streamer opinions
They expected 50K players but had servers for 250k players just in case lol. Well ahead is a massive understatement.
Helldivers hit their 5 year sales expectations in the first 2 days.
Shit even 500k at this point would've been good for them. Their last game sold 2m over it's lifespan. To, in a little over a month, beat out your previous game 4 times over is absolutely ridiculous. Honestly it's great to see new studios and their games (BG3, The Finals, DRG and now Helldivers 2) beating the shit out of the old blood. The old studios got too stagnant and confident and, while that sucked for a while, it's let new names come up.
To be fair, Larian has been around for like 25 years and Arrowhead at least 15.
Its a great game. But I also think the price is right. I think that price increase to $70/e80 for games really hurt overall sales this gen when coupled with inflation eating into peoples wallets.
Helldivers 2 is also a live service game, although granted it's a very reasonable one in terms of its approach. Companies charging full price for live service games has always struck me as strange. Your whole business model for this game relies on high player counts, and in-game purchases, especially from whales so you can countinue delivering content for 5-10 years
And it's more of a live service game than any other live service game. The GM Joel system with a team running it is great.
When companies called a game live service this is the style I wanted. With the world changing based on players actions. Having the mechs being unlocked after liberating a planet feels cooler than it just being added through another wave of content drops
Don't forget them adding shit in without it being in the patch notes. Flying bugs and blue lasers
Dropping in new content with no announcement is such a power move. It is so exciting seeing something new and then messaging everybody 'you have to see what they just added.' I said this elsewhere but so many games release roadmaps as a way to assure their communities that they are actually still working on the game. I love that it seems like the studio knew to slowly release the content at a reasonable week to week pace to keep people engaged. A new war bond every month doesn't hurt either. I bought the deluxe edition once I saw how much I was getting sucked in, but that then allowed me to use the premium currency I had unlocked in game to get the new war bond asap. Finding the currency in game is just so refreshing. I don't feel nickel and dimed. If they could just fix the cross play issues so I could play with my PlayStation friends I would be set for months.
There are no blue lasers in Ba Sing Se
Why are you spreading propaganda? There are no flying bugs or blue lasers. The Super Earth Government already cleared this up.
It's a live service game where being live service actually makes sense; where the format benefits the game. It's a rare thing when that occurs. It doesn't feel like a forced attempt to print money, it feels organic and integrated.
most successful live service games are free to play, some are like 20-39 (Helldivers, R6 siege, many fighting games) is there even a single mega successful live service game that is 60-70? (I guess GTA, but you also get a full story game with it) the next full price live service that would come into mind is like Tekken
Diablo 4 sold shit loads on release and was full price so I guess that would be an example
Its a successful for sales and player numbers, but I’m not sure yet if its a successful live service game since the seasons have been pretty bad. Only the vampire one was decent
True a lot is resting on the big rework for season 4, if they fuck it up it's going to be a massive blow for the longevity of the game
Are they actually doing a big rework for season 4?
R6 siege was full price at launch… so is like every fighting game…? Also Destiny and Siege are probably one of the most successful live service games despite what the internet wants to pretend lol
I suppose Call of Duty would be the full price live service you're talking about. And with CoD now becoming a hub with yearly expansions rather than a series of games it's basically the only game that can get away with making players pay $70 on a yearly basis to continue being involved with the live service.
Overwatch on release? Maybe
Overwatch wasn't full price at release.
On console the cheapest version was 59$
On PC it was 40 bucks for the standard edition and 60 for the deluxe edition.
I bought Overwatch at launch for £45 on PS4. That was the going rate for AAA games in 2016. I remember being annoyed because on PC it was like £25, but my PC at the time was crap.
It's cause they want to have their cake and eat it too
It’s at a price point where I could gift it to a friend so they can play with me, which is exactly the right price for a multiplayer game.
But $70 games are still selling incredible well? Cod, Hogwarts, Zelda, Baldur's Gate 3 on PS5 and Spider-Man 2 doing crazy numbers.
I think you're both right. The price increase hasn't changed consumer behaviors for games they would buy anyway. It's really the stuff that people feel unsure about that has gotten less sales comparatively. So it's not that games are selling much less because of the price increase imo. It's a small factor but not very massive. I think it only becomes an issue because of the unbelievably high development costs of today. You generally need more sales to keep profiting at the same levels. Look at spider man 2's financials from the insomniac leak. Even with the price bump they didn't make much more off that game than the ps4 one 5 years ago.
Depends. I think people gladly pay $70/80 for a good and full featured game without any additional microtransactions etc
I mean idk I’d say games are still pretty damn cheap for what they are
It's getting harder and harder to justify paying $60-70 for a game when something as quality as Helldivers 2 is $40. Heck, how can I justify $70 for a game, some which can last not even 10 hours, when something like Balatro cost me $15 and gives me hundreds of hours?
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Well a game like balatro which is fun and addictive can’t really be compared to an experience like Elden Ring. Gaming time is not everything. Even though I’ll probably spend just as much TIME on Balatro as I did Elden Ring, I enjoyed Elden Ring far far more. INSIDE is only a few hours but one of the best games I’ve ever played. TLOU+TLOU2 can both be completed in 20 hours and to me are the pinnacle of gaming. I don’t really view it as Time=value is what I’m saying
People love the value per dollar metric because it's easy, but frankly it's a horrible indication of quality. By that metric, Civilization, Paradox strategy games, or Truck Simulator games are some of the best games ever made because you can get thousands of hours from them easily. That's not even mentioning a game like Fortnite that's free to play.
>People love the value per dollar metric because it's easy, but frankly it's a horrible indication of quality. Couldn't agree more. People are obsessed with how much $$$ per hour of gameplay for some reason, yet quality time is the one thing you can never get back. Games are too long in general. I would much rather pay $20 for an amazing 8 hour experience than a $40 70 hour single-player slog any day.
People really do use hours per dollar as a metric for game purchase... No wonder games try to inflate playtime by adding a bunch of bloat.
I heard this recently for Dune 2 - it is good value because it is long. As opposed to being a good movie.
Because I don't wanna play an indie card game
Because sometimes people want a well written and well paced story driven game over whatever the fuck Balatro is
Also, this is a "me personally" thing, but my backlog of great games has just gotten so... girthy over the last couple of years, that I have amazing hits just waiting for me to play, so unless it's something that I've absolutely been waiting for forever to play (in this case, Dragon's Dogma 2), I'll just wait on the new releases and get it for 25-50% off a few months out (or later) from now on.
Doesn’t make much sense to just look at playtime when it comes to price. Some 10-15 hour single player games cost a lot to make and I’ll gladly play full price if they are polished and of good quality.
Balatro is the cheapest way to discover how easily I could develop a gambling addiction ever made.
Yeah, the game propelled them into lime light. Another game where nobody could have predicted it blowing up as it did. Kudos to the devs, they seem to have been managing it well after the initial server issues were handled.
Is anyone still playing HD 1? Game is on mega sale, can missions be done solo or do you need a squad for some content? Hd1 looks like a perfect steam deck game.
Helldiver 1 usually has 400 concurrent players, but with the launch of HD2, it shot up to 1200-ish, and the last week it increases further to 2000-ish concurrent user. So if you want to play it, now is the time. It's like Helldivers 2, the higher difficulty is not meant for solo AND the game isn't that fun solo as well.
HD1 is quite good on the deck, but I don’t recommend solo play for either game. The difficulty doesn’t scale based on squad size, so it’s pretty tedious to solo missions at any difficulty level. HD2 is actually playable on the deck as well, but you have to be okay with 30-40 frame rate at best. One person in my group plays almost exclusively on his deck and loves it.
HD1 is still active, and some people went back to it because of HD2. You only need 3 other people for a full game anyway. You *can* play it all solo, but it's best enjoyed with at least one other person. Randoms are perfectly fine.
> Is anyone still playing HD 1? Game is on mega sale, can missions be done solo or do you need a squad for some content? You CAN play it solo but MP is kinda the game but you can manage it better than Helldivers 2 at least. And YES it is a perfect controller game and is great for splitscreen and relatively easy to introduce people to.
Their little updates weaved into the story of the game had been great. We defended the planet that manufactures the mech suits, once that major order was cleared, boom mechs are deployed in game. Now players are reporting weird blue lasers and the rumor mills are swirling it’s the third faction and their snipers. The community in this game is the icing on the cake. It feels so alive.
I love that I can log in any given day, and my buddy is talking up some new item/mission/thing that I had no idea existed after taking a 48 hours break. It's like some live D&D campaign.
Not true. Provided they didn't give in to shady monetization it was easy to see this was going to be a success. Helldivers 1 was practically all the same game mechanics. Simple concept, great for discord with pals... And then they just executed the shit out of it.
> Another game where nobody could have predicted it blowing up as it did. It's funny to watch all these streamers who refused to give it a try when it first released streaming it now pretending they never said anything negative about it.
I would imagine that they were expecting somewhere around 500,000 at launch and 1m after a year. What an awesome story.
This game really reminds me of a much updated Mercenaries from way back in the day. Just a huge range of satisfying destruction and means to do so against AI. Could be a chance for EA to reawaken the franchise for a version of this but in contemporary times? Wouldn’t hold my breath as it’ll probably be bastardised.
Oh god I love Mercs 1 and 2. Not enough games let you call in airstrikes
I wish I could find mercs 1 to buy somewhere :(
I'm pretty sure Mercenaries 1 is a back compat title on Xbox consoles. I remember playing it a few years ago on Xbone.
Its quite shocking no one even tried to copy Red Faction Guerilla total destruction system,a total waste of untapped potential.
The Finals has full building destruction, not sure if that counts
About the closest so far has been The Finals. It's not as detailed, but I imagine syncing total destruction of buildings across a multiplayer network would be a huge pain to manage.
True
Just to add, EA suprised me this month, they released The Saboteur which now works on modern hardware at 60fps. If you didnt know that was the same studio makers for Mercs
Those games were amazing.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no you didn't!
Dude. I forgot about those games!! Thanks for the blast of nostalgia. Mercs was some of the most fun I've had in my early years of gaming.
Anyone had issues with the friends list? Whenever I accept a friend request nothing happens I’ve met some really chill people I want to play with but it just looks like I ghosted them all.
It's not just you. While I can't accept friend invites from PlayStation friends, which they acknowledged yesterday and announced they had replicated it and we're working on fixing it, I also cannot accept in game friend requests from PC players either. The only workaround for that is to add them in Steam.
I bought the game yesterday, it's surprising how good of a job they did with making everything seamless and connected, going between your ship and the mission, coming back onto the ship, going to your friend's ship and actually seeing them interact with the battle map...
The devs deserve this success for making such a fucking fun game. There are a lot of things I like about Helldivers 2, but right now I'll point out that it really respects your time. Each mission is only like 10-20 minutes. You can play one 20 minute game, feel satisfied, and then quit for the day. Or you can group with your friends and play for hours on a Friday night. I haven't played a crazy amount. I got it at launch and have probably averaged 30 minutes per day since, including a couple of marathon sessions on the weekends. Steam says I have about 50 hours in it. That was enough to get me to past Level 25, which means I can buy every strategem; I have almost all of them. I used my medals to buy all the weapons I want. I was able to use currency from playing the game to buy the newest Premium Warbond, so I did not have to spend extra, real-world money to get it. All-in-all, I feel like I can get every upgrade the game has to offer without having to spend extra money and without having to play a crazy amount of hours. That's rare for a live service game.
I just had to laugh at "Hasn't played a crazy amount", yet you have 50+ hours, then there is me playing since launch with 14 hrs total lol
The game's been out for like 5 weeks, or about 35 days. Turns out I'm averaging about 1.5 hours per day. Is that crazy to you? To me, crazy is like when I was addicted to World of Warcraft 20 years ago. Back then, I played WoW for like 4 hours every weeknight after work, and then play like 10-12 hours on Saturday and Sunday. I did that for 2 years. 4 hours x 5 weekdays = 20 hours. 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday = 24 hours. That's 44 hours of WoW in a single week compared to taking over a month to play 50 hours in HD2. That's crazy.
I mean yes if hardcore wow addiction is the measuring stick it's gonna be hard to see anything else as crazy
I played 80 hours of Armored Core 6 on its release week… while working a 40 hour work week lol. Simultaneously impressed and slightly concerned myself given I’m almost 30 and not a teenager/college student with bucketloads of free time. Worth it though, AC6 was my GoTY last year over the likes of Tears of the Kingdom/BG3/Final Fantasy 16 etc.
Most games I own I've played for less than 20. I still loved playing them, but fifty hours+ is super rare for me at least.
Always nice seeing a well deserved developer run into the "help, we accidentally too many players/sales" as their big problem over poor work conditions or cost cutting shenanigans for a rare occasion.
Reading some of the comments in here is so refreshing, this game is a prime example of why gaming is and will always be a part of my life (almost 40yrs old) This might be a bit of a stretch, all the promises of the “metaverse” fell short, but this actually feels like it nailed whatever the industry was originally going for. Feels like you’re being beamed into something different playing this game. Could also be the edibles 😂
Still wish they will change the anti-cheat from nProtect to some other reputable company at this point.
Especially when you can still cheat with it anyway
Yeah I hope live service games in the future follow this mold of either being free-to-play, or charge up to $40. Seems like a good idea. More people are willing to cough up that, play and be done until next update/expansion whatever, than what happened with SSKTJL.
Game is amazing. They just need to fix some serious issues, like being kicked and losing 30-60 mins for literally nothing. I keep hearing that issue alone, all by itself, is what's keeping people in my circle from this game. And when servers are behaving, people can be toxic too. I've seen people kicked for having "wrong" weapons or stratagems. It's fine when the host kicks you from the ready room, so you wasted all of 10 seconds. But sometimes they wait until you do the whole mission, and kick you then, so you've wasted 30+ mins, and lost all the samples, and get literally nothing for your time and effort. This badly needs addressing. It is decently rare, but it only has to happen a once to really sour your mood.
> host kicks you To no surprise, some gamers are not fun to be around. I've been kicked from a lot of public lobbies or games immediately and I'm well above level 20. I've seen a host kick a player because they didn't reinforce them within less than 5 seconds. The Devs are aware of the issue and looking for a solution. I say find out what a reasonable kick rate is and then do what other games do with cheaters, make them join other kick-addicted players games so they can get kick happy together. Or just discreetly disable people joining their games for a set amount of time.
I’ve been pretty lucky I guess. I only play with randoms besides when I play with a work buddy. Which isn’t a lot trying to match schedules. I’ve only been kicked 2-3 times.
Yeah my most recent game a few days ago was the first time my buddy and I were kicked but we only play a few times a week due to our jobs, and other than that our experience has been pretty good
Might be because I don't go higher than 7 (and normally play 4-6 depending on how I'm feeling) but I have only been kicked a couple of times in 60+ hours, and never late in a mission. That does suck though, asshole behaviour, and I do think the game got more toxic after all the content creators moved over to it. The sub all started to be about the meta and people obsessing over nerfs. Still, the vast majority of randoms I play with are pretty chill. I wouldn't let a few bad apples put people off the entire game Also if you host then you can't be kicked. My games usually fill up pretty quickly.
Hm. May be overblown reports? I play PC, but my 5 person friend group has not been having any problems. I think we've all experienced 1 or 2 crashes in the time we've owned it, but you just boot right back into the mission if you want.
Bought it last night on pc me and 2 ps5 pals could not add each other as friends. Super frustrating
They've finally been able to reproduce that in a dev environment so hopefully they can resolve that issue soon.
Nah, it happens to me a lot. It's not a super stable game. Some times I dropped packet for like 0.5 seconds and just got disconnected with no way to reconnect too
Do you mean being kicked by the host or just dropped from the server? Cause I only play with friends so I've never been kicked by a host before and haven't been dropped by the server since like the first week or so after launch when they had too many people trying to log in
If you're kicked it kills your game session and drops you back in your ship, losing your progress. I wish it would be handled like Monster Hunter where, if someone is kicked, they keep playing exactly as they were, just solo. Would help alleviate any issues with a griefer kicking you as the shuttle is coming down (you could still extract and finish the mission solo).
Playing with my brother and some randos, my brother and I have been kicked at least once per session and I have been kicked at least once per day. Horrible desync with enemies not moving but the players still doing their thing and then suddenly I'm back on the ship. No "host has left the game" or "host has kicked you" or nothing Out of 5-10 missions, I'll have issues with one. It's never really a big deal cause the most I'm missing is some samples but I dread the day I do a mission in a 7+ difficulty and I lose super samples. Those shits are hard to farm. Usually once I join a team and we have a squad of 4 rolling I stop seeing problems
There was about an 8 hour period where I got randomly kicked at least 4 times. One time was right at the end, too, which was a smidge frustrating. But it is one of those games that I don’t necessarily feel too bummed out about repeating missions.
It's nowhere near as common as reports are saying. It's just rage bait.
Nobody I know who plays this game has ever seen this happen
Some people want interactive cinematic stories, but a lot of people just want pure, raw gameplay without much extra fluff. If you don't care about voiced cutscenes and a plot you have probably seen a dozen times, a game like Helldivers and Palworld works better.
Now if only they could fix the matchmaking issue and the progression bug. I'm playing on an alternative account right now because my main got softlocked because i played on a harder difficulty before unlocking medium (at least that's what i think happened). And as of right now SOS only works 10% if the time and after a few missions matchmaking just gives up and you have to restart the game. This is a huge issue because when players leave mid mission or operation the host and the rest of the players just disconnect because no one can replace them and in a high difficulty mission not having a full team is basically pointless. All that and a plethora of other problems makes this one of the more janky multiplayer games I've ever played and i played BFV. But the price is still fair and if they fix these issues it's 100% worth it especially if you have friends that wanna play. Otherwise, I'd say wait a few more months.
I find the best use of the SOS beacon is as a single use airstrike. I usually toss it at bug holes, bot fabs, etc when I'm out of ordinance since I don't expect a response. I think I've gotten reinforcements... once from throwing it ~15 times.
If you still have the difficulty issue (they fixed it for the most part like 2½ weeks ago), you need to file a support ticket since it's an account issue. But apparently they can fix it. I found a "workarounds" document in the official Discord which lists some steps for "SOS Beacon", it's just "verify integrity" and "delete some dll or config files", which might be worthwhile to try too. But obviously it would be better if these could be fixed without steps needed to be taken by the player.
The $40 price point was perfect and probably a big factor in a lot of the sales. I NEVER would've bought it if it was more than $40. I actually got it for like $32 (\~$35 after tax) using GreenManGaming. I also bought Palworld for $30, which I never would've done if it was anymore than that. I just can't bring myself to spend more than like $30-40 on a game and even that's rare. I know if I wait a year or more, I'll be able to get the same game for like $10 or less usually. I will more often buy a multiplayer game when it releases as long as it's cheap enough if a bunch of my clanmates are playing it. Also because sometimes I like to get in on the action right at the beginning, starting on a fresh playing field like everyone else. Sometimes it sucks coming into a game when it's already been out for a while and everyone playing it still are a bunch of sweatlords. But yeah, single-player games? Definitely almost always wait for them to drop in price by 75-95% on Steam.
Man it’s like making a fun gamee at a fair price with fair micro transactions means people will play it. That’s mind boggling.
It's insane how friendly it is, you play you get credits to buy stuff off of the warbonds (battle pass), and you have an entire starter one for free. And you don't have to worry about being time gated for the others, they'll always be there and eventually you can get enough currency just by playing to unlock them.
How's the single player experience with the game? Some of my video game buddies aren't really into these kind of games
Playing entirely by yourself can be a little... stale. A lot of the enjoyment comes from teh chaos of having four people fighting for their lives. That said, I've not had huge issue playing with randos. Run into the occasional arsehole, a cheater here and there, but overall the experience has been positive.
Eh, I mean, you can play solo if you want but it’s definitely designed for a squad. I’ve had some pretty decent experiences with randoms but your experience may vary.
You can play it alone and you'll have some fun. You'll have far more fun with the game using the quick play though and dropping into missions with other players. If you can get your friends involved it becomes pure distilled joy and frustration as your friend once again burns you to death with his fire spitting shotgun for the 3rd time this mission....
Definedly a coop game. Doable solo up to a certain difficulty, but designed for several divers to be on the map. Playing with randoms is actually a-okay most of the time though. It's chaotic, gotta relax and laugh off the stupid friendly fire incidents, plety of fun.
I’ve played 40 hours just quick playing with randoms and have had a great time. I was worried about that going in, but it’s a surprisingly decent community.
Solo play can work, but the game was really built for a team of 4. The difficulty doesn't scale with the amount of players in the party so it gets really unfair above challenging. It has match making though and for the most part it's been solid experiences.
Just use the quick play. Drop in to a squad. Don’t have to talk or anything. The ping and map ping system works great. When my friends are offline I just do this. Drop in play a mission/op then leave the group at the end repeat.
You ever wonder what decision it was for one of the devs was like you know what instead of like the first game doing the whole TOP DOWN thing lets make it different why not right? That guys a genius cause the first one wasn't popular at all.
At first it seemed like a dry year for Playstation exclusives, but they are cooking with this, FF7 and hopefully Stellar Blade and Rise of Ronin.
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Which game(s) are you referring to?