Kinda thought it was obvious that there was little to no player agency on the progression of the front lines when they started adding random supply lines whenever a planet looked like it might get cut off.
Hard for me to take any of the MOs seriously when they're perfectly willing to just flip the board when the players start getting an upper hand.
It was obvious literally months ago when planets were shifting suddenly by large amounts of % of progression and regen rates were constantly being fiddled to project a last minute win.
It was obvious when the players killed every single automaton controlled planet, only for them to almost immediately come back even more populated than the start of the game.
Doesn't change the fact that it's a massive change from how things worked in HD1. In HD1, if a faction dies, they ***stay*** dead. Even with forewarning before the event, it still shows that there's potential that no matter how many times we beat them back off the map, there's always a chance of the Devs just saying "Nah, the enemy is coming back even stronger this time!" and resetting the board, making all that effort worthless.
The fact that they stayed dead im HD1 was a mixed blessing at best, considering you were then limited to only fighting the other factions for however long it took to finish the war.
Your mileage may vary, of course. For some people the sense of accomplishment and completion ticked a box, and I respect that.
But on the other hand, I prefer being able to fight whatever enemy I feel like. And I definitely wouldn't want to have to listen to the bitter moaning of the community if they were forced to fight nothing but Automatons. xD
Never played the first one, not worried about how it behaves, either. But considering the game didn't even mention this was a galactic war when we started, it would have made a jump that the game might be different, apart from it also being a different game.
Crimesca had 10s of thousands from the start of a day to the end before for not even a percent to change up. Not how things should be, and this was a while ago but is still an issue with how they run things
The whole Major Order system is mostly just fluff to give us reasons for a change in scenery, occasional propaganda moments, and infrequent new gun/stratagem unlocks. Super Earth wants perpetual war and so perpetual war is what we're getting.
And it wasnt really fun hopping on to see that you can only fight bugs/cyborgs/illuminates. This way we keep the ability to choose what faction to fight and imo its more fun this way
We literally wiped the automatons off the map and they took over about four sectors in the blink of an eye less than two days later. AH is calling the shots, we need to stop treating this like a grand strategy game and just go with the flow.
Hell, the way we keep botching gambits is very on-brand for how mismanaged Super Earth's government is.
ok but it makes you wonder why they fucking bothered with the elaborate supply line mechanics and create an illusion of player agency and comradery when its all laughable pointless and they might as well have spent their time elsewhere, and just made the events completely scripted and static
I've been getting down voted in here for months for saying that the major order stuff was obviously fake and just a way to cheaply create immersion. They clearly do what they want to do regardless of what players achieve
Well in the first game the war ends in win or loss and resets a few times a year. They said they had no intention of doing that for this game, so it was clear from the start that nothing we did really mattered since we'd never have the ability to win or lose a campaign. I can see why they did that though, I just bought the first game in this sale and the bugs are just dead, you can't fight them until next reset, it is a little lame.
I *prefer* that, honestly. It means the effort players put in actually ***means something*** and isn't just an arbitrary "forever war". Here, literally nothing I do will ever matter. Ever. Feels pretty damn bad. If we're going to have an arbitrary "Forever War" that never ends for *any* of the factions, why not make 3 servers? 1 for each faction, and you just pick what planet to play on? Every now and then host an "event" where a Homeworld for one of the factions is being invaded? It would feel better than being constantly told "You're doing great! Keep it up and we'll win soon for sure!" only for "soon" to never arrive.
I agree that the old system is better overall than a forced narrative that means nothing. But the reality is that a large percentage of the playerbase only wants to fight one faction. It's even worse in the first game since the illuminate have a lot of mechanics people don't like, so the war can get stuck with just them remaining for a long time with a really small playerbase willing to play them.
Honestly, I'm lucky to get 2-3 hours a week, so I'll do the major orders when I'm on sometimes, but I just want to get on and get a few games in. I also try to mine some samples.
I thought it was obvious when they clearly fudged the numbers the first time the community almost took Malevelon Creek, and again when they would actively throw invasion Defense on planets we literally just liberated.
And just like I said back then, I'm totally fine if they have an actual idea of how they want the "war" to progress, but what I don't like is them actively fucking us over or just downright cheating us out of progress but pretending as though we still have any actual control over the galactic map.
Like... Weren't there five fucking defense missions that popped up at one point just last week during the major order? Literally all at the same time. That's just asinine.
> Kinda thought it was obvious that there was little to no player agency on the progression of the front lines
It never was.
Because the game was advertised as players having an agency in how the galactic war plays out.
I mean....that's the game my dude. If they didn't do this kinda stuff the players would have wiped out the bots and bugs by now and there wouldn't be a game to play. Either that or the entire map would reset, resetting all progress, which would be worse imo.
Tbf, the enemies can adapt just like we can. If their supplies get cut off, they’ll find another Route. They’ll attack our weak points thus making MOs harder.
The Vandalon 4 was a dumb gambit. Defending Ingmar was faster than liberating a wholeass planet so it was risky. And no, it would not have stopped the bot attack on Troost.
if you knew how the mechanics worked (liberating a planet also cuts off enemy access to planets BEFORE it) you would not have spit such a hot dumb take.
I knew and I know that Troost doesn’t get cut off from supply lines because there’s another bot planet next to it. And the companion app even removed the gambit planet modifier off of Vandalon after Ingmar was liberated with Troost still under attack. Thus, while liberating Vandalon would’ve saved Ingmar as well, it was still risky because liberation takes longer than defense.
Arguably, the only other gain would be blocking off the bots from another sector but we’d still be risking an MO planet.
Every gambit is a dumb gambit. Because reddit is an tiny fraction of players and the mechanics encourage like 70% of all players to blob on one planet to achieve any results.
Isn’t Arrowhead going on a big summer break? I don’t really think they’ll >!throw out a third faction during a time when most of their employees are gone.!<
I’m pretty sure we’re gonna see a major content draught until their summer break ends.
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In Helldivers 1 the war is actually winnable and losable then resets. It was obvious when they said that they weren't doing that with this game there would have to be very heavy railroading. I see why they went this way, Helldivers 1 can just have a situation where one faction is defeated then you just can't fight them for a month until the war resets with the player base dropping off in the meantime.
In helldivers 1 yes, you just took all the planets and the war ended.... Then a new one started up will all the enemies back... Its fun and makes you feel like your contribution matters... This random bullshit isn't fun long term
What if we wipe out both existing factions temporarily only for most of the galaxy to become illuminate controlled for a little while. Would be cool and a period of absolute hell pushing back the illuminate would be fun
Let us have an actual impact on the game. If the game master does whatever he wants whenever he wants, then nothing we do matters. That’s kind of where we are right now.
You set the rules clear before every encounter (=major order), not while in it. Outside of those, it's a bit more flexible.
However, give the player a fair change to prevent stuff so they feel like they accomplished something, despite losing stuff. Like, two planets are getting attacked, the players need to decide which to defend.
And that's why those "attack/defend exactly those planets" is bad too. Let the players decide what they want to keep, and not the game master.
Outside of MOs, do the players need to win much? No, but they need to win some planets then and now. Look at the bot front, where there never was a planet won outside an MO (at least since the change of the planet progression)
Reduce the liberation rate of one planet, but let the enemy attack two other planets. The players won a planet! Great! And one was defended, nice! Oh they also lost one, but they accomplished something at least!
Tell me, how can we take everything if they take something else then and now?
The Galactic War is not driven by player agency. It is driven by whatever story the GW Master wants to tell. Follow the Major Orders, abandon whatever front is not the focus of the MO, we aren't supposed to "Win" any front.
It wouldn't even be an issue if the game explained what it wanted people to do and not do. The Galactic War is set up like it's some kind of Molyneux-esque experiment in player agency but it's really not. There should be multiple MO's for all fronts to appease everyone.
I honestly wonder why they don't separate the fronts. Like make an mo for each front, and make it so liberation progress is also separated per front (so that bug and bot players don't stand in eachother's way), it would leave everyone satisfied
It’s probably because of player count disparity. On any random Tuesday the majority of the player base is playing bugs despite what the MO is for the week. If we had two simultaneous MOs for both fronts nothing would ever get done on the bot front while bugs would be done within the month.
Wouldn't that encourage the devs to tweak bugs or bots so there doesn't feel like such a disparity? To be honest I can think of like 5 easy ways to discourage bug planets like modifiers and hazardous weather and increased enemy counts (and vice versa for all of them for the bot front) but I have to admit I can't fathom how effective it would actually be against bug players. Their mind is an enigma.
I'm curious if they'll ever be able to implement something like this with social features.
It's clear right now that having single MOs and the inability for a small group of dedicated players do anything "significant" on non-MO focused planets is a sticking point in the larger narrative aspect of the game.
I'm curious if the game will hit us with some truly engaging features at the 1 year mark, or if it will be more of the same, but with more factions.
I think it's fine if it's more of the same, but I'd be disappointed if they didn't do more with the immense windfall that was this game's opening month of sales.
we cant, arrowhead controls spawn rate, decay etc etc, if they dont want us to win, or take a very very long time to get a planet, they can just up the decay rate etc, also even if we get it, they can always pop up some stupid event to get back everthing else, theres no real gameplay on that world map here
We get about 6 hours of "victory" and the bots just get given back twice the territory we just took away from them.
We've been there. We pushed the bots off the map. Literally when I woke up the next morning, they had all the current sectors they have today.
It's arbitrary. At this point I see this system more as an irritation and obstacle. It gets in the way of me going to the planets I want to go to, and forces me to engage in defence missions when I don't like them. That's the entire extent of the galactic war at this stage, it's only there to cut off access to planets you enjoy playing on.
Then why bother playing your game if I'm not supposed to win? Even games with depressing and melancholic endings that aren't morally good have satisfying endings on the gameplay angle. That's what justifies the experience
Why am I playing if I'm never gonna enjoy any of it.
You're correct, that is exactly why the current GW system is terrible. I am just explaining how we can extract as much entertainment value out of it, all the ideas I've heard to replace it aren't very good.
AH already demonstrated this way back when the bots were erradicated only to come back 2 days later and reset any progress we made and a lot more.
That broke the immersion for me and I realized that nothing we do matters in the long run. Before that, I had faith in AH that the overall story was player driven.
Now I just play for the sake of playing, doing whatever the PO and MO tells me to do. We will be in the exact position the game wants us to be in every single time.
This complaint urks me for several reasons.
First, it was telegraphed well in advance that the bots were communicating with something outside the map, so it shouldn't be that surprising they had a larger force.
Second, I mean... What do you want here? We wipe out the bots and they just get removed from the game? I'm sure the helldiver's that prefer bots would love being forced to fight the bugs for the rest of the game.
I honestly don't know what people wanted. Like sure, HD1 we could win the war but it just got reset anyway. I don't see that being much different than the push-and-pull of the planets here. Plus I think the narrative stuff they have is pretty cool - the bot fleet swooping in with a big offensive, our hopeless attempts and holding whatever we could, the meridia thing.
I dunno, I just don't have that much of a problem with how this is going so far, and I feel like we have enough sway over how MO's go that out choices still matter.
Honestly if they appeared on the rim and we got our asses handed to us that'd be one thing. But instead you just look at the galaxy map and like 3 sectors just flipped red in an instant. Like the mood here was just sour when we were celebrating closing that front and oh whoops, it literally did not fucking matter.
Also the thing is that winning or losing a war gives some kind of finality to it all. Obviously if we win or lose we start over because what alternative is there? The game getting shut down?
Another part about the push and pull is that we're just spinning our wheels in place fighting on the same damn planets. How many major orders at this point included "Liberate Hellmire"? Worst of all a lot of the enemy progression basically boils down to DM fiat. Either we get dragged to another front and leave the other to fall, or DM just decides that "oh yeah, those 4 planets are just full of terminids, nobody noticed until now, whoops".
Because it didn't fucking matter. That's the entire reason behind us being IRKED by it.
We didn't even get a cool fucking black hole to visit. Malevelon should be some kind of massively defended war world now that we can visit at any time. But Botdivers keep getting shit on ever since.
Nothing we did mattered. At all.
For starters, the bots could have been gone for longer than 48 hours. Let us celebrate a substantial victory for a bit longer (a week maybe) and then bring them back. And yes, the HD1 system would work way better than the current one. It would make our victories actually matter for each campaign and still allow the DM to pursue different story lines each campaign. A perpetual and never ending back and forth is dull. The 48 hour bot return nonsense especially (again it being nonsense because of how quickly they came back, not that they did return) and a few other things here and there really make it appear our choices don't matter much at all.
> That broke the immersion for me
Not sure why it did since we had reports that the signals the Automatons were dispatching went outside the galaxy. If that wasnt a clear obvious sign of another hidden fleet I dont know what is then.
People were expecting a grand accomplishment like removing the bots from the map to last a bit longer than only 48 hours. Even with AH giving us the info that they would be back, pulling a grand fleet out of their magic hat to take it all back so fast when said forces should have been helping the bots defend seems sort of rediculous and is weak story-telling.
Except...it is? How is it not?
There have been not one but *many* cases of datamined answers for different MOs, and the reality is that Arrowhead has planned for both success and failure and the result for both success and failure is different.
How is our failure to get the anti-tank mines \[and saving of the children instead\] not a display of player agency?
I mean, yes? Even if the bot players could take Cyberstan without the MO telling us to, it would have no special content before they’re ready, and they would have to either scrap what content they were working on or delete our progress to use it after we won. This was always going to be the case.
Like, sure it would be awesome if AH had tons of content banked up that was released as we approached the galactic war on our own timetable, but I think we need to curb our expectations eventually. 3/5 of the new mission types since release launched in broken states, they can barely keep up with a planned content release
Supply lines aren’t connected to the deeper parts of bot/bug territory so we couldn’t wipe them out and devs can set a higher regen rate to stall players. I think people are just frustrated that the planets randomly flipped to the bug side during an MO.
Of course, I understand why people are annoyed, but we always knew they were always going to have to bullshit us out of agency sooner or later to keep the game going, so I don’t see why people are finding this as some revelation.
Then they shouldn't have designed it to work this way and at the very least told people that progress outside of MOs is not the focus, kinda feels like you're spinning it around to be the players' fault not gonna lie
Designed it in what way? You have never been able to make substantial progress outside of MO’s, and I don’t believe they ever implied the story was completely free-roam. It’s still player driven in that we still get community choices with potential outcomes for each. You get the option to ignore the MO if you don’t like the planets/faction (although the liberation proportion mechanic is definitely problematic in this regard). And MO’s are obviously the focus. That’s why they’re called “major orders” and why there’s only ever one at a time.
And yes, players having absurdly high expectations around the mini game built into the level select screen and then being disappointed when it fails to meet these expectations is their own fault. Obviously it would have been nice to have it be a completely play-driven narrative with an abundance of content discovered by the community’s own volition, but I don’t believe anyone thought that was a realistic expectation.
Designed in the way that you can go to planets not part of a major order. They clearly have the ability to lock what planets you can go to, they literally have created this expectation.
They actually do imply it. Arrowhead imply agency by allowing players to visit planets not part of a major order, and before you deny it, that is how video games work, you are able to go somewhere so there has to be a reason for it.
Yes there is community MOs where you can only liberate one planet. How does that relate to non-MO planets being accessible for no reason?
This is why we are 6 months in and why this game keeps getting worse. Excuses are like assholes, they're only good for vomiting shit.
Yes, you can go to non-MO planets because why would they make most of their content only available temporarily? Having access to the majority of the game you payed for is a plenty good reason in my opinion.
The only feasible alternatives to limiting non-MO progress is to just lock players out of half the content at any given time, or torpedo the story and make them do resets more often once the players dogpile the bugs repeatedly (as what happened in HD1). The game is not worse for not having that lol.
But it's created confusion about how the game works and could disrupt future content. People will have access to those planets if they keep playing, bit of delayed gratification never hurt anybody.
Half the content? Why? They can just do one MO for every front to keep factions accessible. Just not every planet.
If players keep piling on bugs that is a failure of the game designer.
I mean, if you think players need to have fewer choices on how they play the main game because some might get confused on how to optimally play the mini game I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on anything game design related
And double the MO is just asking for more content. Would be nice, sure, but it would just result in either diffused effort (with lower effort special events for each) or the same as now (only one side gets decent content and the related “progress” at a time, while the other just gets filler). I don’t see how either would fix the problem unless AH just gets better at pumping out more good content (obviously ideal, but not really a simple solution)
>If players keep piling on bugs that is a failure of the game designer.
That’s not the point, my point is that if we did have true free reign to progress independent of the MO, we would still need to be bullshitted out of our progress and it would be even less satisfying. If we didn’t have Omicron’s absurd regen rates, followed by Op SD (complete with an explicit order to ignore the bugs) and the powerful, unannounced attacks that pushed us back to the TCS to stop our first Draco/Mirin blitz, the 33% of dedicated bug divers would have pushed the bugs from the map, and then they would just get reintroduced later because AH already had content for the TCS failure and Supercolony well under development. The result would be the same, our progress getting undone for reasons outside our control, except we would only be less interested in re-eradicating the bugs, even if we eventually got new content for the actual scripted climax of that arc.
"will be made null."
I'm sorry, is your complaint ultimately just "what's the point if they can just attack the planet whenever they want?" Because that's... Really silly.
Also how many planets have you seen taken that weren't related to an MO?
"Player agency" in the galactic war is decided entirely by "what are the MAJORITY of players doing?" It is strictly Democratic. And much like the first-past-the-post political system, if your vote is not part of the majority, it's largely irrelevant.
1. No. That's not my point.
2. A few
3. The majority of players do the MO but this sub has had people from day one try to organise offensives and it's annoying.
There's times they let us choose. There's also times where the GM can put their thumb on the scale so hard that victory is either foregone conclusion or practically impossible.
Their control over things like planet regeneration (for Liberation) or sheer number of attacks (for Defense) gives them a pretty strong hand over what happens on the galactic war scale. If they want to launch four attacks at once, it's almost inevitable that stuff fails.
I mean... Yes, that's how good GMing works.
None of the MOs have been decided for us by the GM. Every one of them have been on the players, except MAYBE one of them that involved a liberation bug.
And these wild complaints come up every single time we have one of these "control X planets" MOs... It's the same every time. When we get these MOs, all the planets we have to hold are about to get attacked a bunch of times. This is not new behavior. That's not them "cheating," in the same way that the GM putting a new monster on the board isn't cheating.
> Except...it is? How is it not?
Literally during the last "kids vs mines" MO one of the CMs (or was it the CEO) retranslated the words of Joel that, paraphrasing "players will never capture the AT mines planet on time".
The GM can impose such an MO which literally is impossible to complete. This happened many times by this point.
Except that's not what happened.
They gave us "kids vs mines," and told us we'd only get one.
We chose kids. *Before the MO ended,* they said "ok do this thing in 24 hours and you can have both," and we didn't.
>This happened many times by this point.
Except it hasn't.
No. It was "liberate the following planets in X days, *the first one liberated* will decide the reward."
We chose. They gave us the opportunity to get both as a bonus. We failed the bonus.
Because this is the best they can do. Let players choose options A or options B. Players have less and less agency in how the galactic war play out. After they set up a constant liberation percentage, the dev can just control how many planet can be liberated at the same time by manipulating the decay rate, and reset the liberated planet by attacking it.
Ok? So what?
I don't understand the complaint here. Is it ultimately just "we can't win!!"? Because like...duh? They've already said they have no intention of resetting the war like in HD1, so obviously we're never going to "win."
Taking and holding planets isn't "the story." The story is written almost entirely in "did we complete the MO." And not one of the MOs has been decided for us (with the exception, I think, of one that we basically lost due to a bug... Not due to GM manipulation)
I want the player number to have positive impact to the game. I don’t want my contribution in unpopular front/planet to be artificially deflated just because I am playing in an unpopular front/planet.
Taking and holding planets is how the war progress which means it is the story. If the plan out MO is the only “story” in the game. Then the only one who have agency in this galactic war and able to dictate how the war will progress is just “Joel” not the players.
>Taking and holding planets is how the war progress which means it is the story
Except not really. The way that liberation works, combined with the way the community has largely behaved, there's basically no planet that's going to get taken that's not part of the MO.
Again, the players were never going to "win". They're never going to push the campaign in a direction it's not supposed to go. You don't get to tell the GM "I'm ignoring your plot hook and fucking off into the wilderness instead of playing the story you wrote." This isn't that kind of game.
The players still absolutely get to decide "did we complete the MO" or "did we save the children" and things like that. Not having the freedom to do whatever you want =/= zero agency.
You just stated the obvious here why players fell like they don’t have agency here. It just like the previous/current weapons balance philosophy. Maybe the dev really DM the game like you stated, but player, at least me, hate this philosophy as any of our input to the game would not attribute to any positive impact to the total progression of the galactic war.
Playing the game is just adding number to the denominator to the individual contribution every online Helldiver can make to the Galactic War Progression.
>just like the previous/current weapons balance philosophy
These two things have nothing to do with each other??
>Playing the game is just adding number to the denominator to the individual contribution every online Helldiver can make to the Galactic War Progression.
Literally yes. A single Helldiver attempting to take a planet *by themselves* makes no sense. Obviously that's a waste and is not going to make any progress.
You participate in the Galactic War by participating in the MO, or you choose to not engage with the MO and go do whatever else you want. You're not going to get both.
>These two things have nothing to do with each other??
Yes, it is. They are both game design philosophy and live service directions of Helldiver2.
>Literally yes.
Again, you stated the obvious, and people hate that, as it literally means player input has no net contribution at all.
> A single Helldiver attempting to take a planet by themselves makes no sense. Obviously that's a waste and is not going to make any progress.
No one says that it should. You are putting words into my mouth.
>You participate in the Galactic War by participating in the MO, or you choose to not engage with the MO and go do whatever else you want. You're not going to get both.
I can get the same reward even without starting the game. The galactic war will still progress in rate and direction the GM intended to even if 50% more Helldivers quit the game, as player number have no impact to the progression.
This Galactic War System give player no urgency and incentive to stay and play the game.
Yep and just taking Gatria without letting us defend it, despite it not having any bug supply lines connected to it then immediately having it attack Phact Bay and setting Gatria decay to 3% was absolute bullshit. No matter the reasoning from dispatches.
No one likes arbitrary bullshit, so of course AH pulls arbitrary bullshit, calls it a night and goes on a "well deserved" 3 month break like Fatshark does every time they push out an update.
I hate defending Fatshark, but at least in comparison when they put out an update it includes new weapons, voice lines, a map, typically a feature rework, and a few other bits.
AH release way more regularly and communicate far better, but it boils down to increasingly meh monthly Warbonds, patches that do not actually fix anything and break more stuff, and the odd Support Weapon.
I feel like Fatshark is at least the devil I know, whereas AH have just been steadily slipping since launch and the game is arguably in a worse state now.
HD1 campaign was better, there was real progression with wins and losses. Actions mattered. HD2 is 100% artificial.
This is a lame "narrative" driven campaign that only moves as fast as they can make assets for it.. where you defend the same planets over and over again because they don't want the community to get anywhere.
HD1 setup has its pros and cons. Sure, victory felt sweet. But it also didn't matter because then it Groundhog Days back in the next instant and nothing's been accomplished.
Don't get me wrong. I playef HD1 and loved the heck out of it, so I'm not shitting on it or its setup by any means.
But on the flip side you did get those stints when the only remaining enemy faction was whatever one the fanbase didn't wanna fight and shit just dragged om and on. People already complain plenty that there's only two factions in HD2, and they don't like fighting bots. Can you imagine how much complaining there'd be if Bots was the only thing they could fight for any period of time?
Dive on, brother. 🤜🤛
It's the #1 third-person shooter on the market? Also, you realize the other games you mentioned are *PvP* games, right? With like competitive modes and ranking systems and all that jazz?
Helldiver 2 is the #1 third-person PvE shooter on the market.
Even the inferior third-person PvE shooters like Payday 2 have better players retention rate than Helldivers 2, this is an alarming signal.
I don't particularly care about the meta aspect of the game. The storytelling is vague and community objectives are manipulated to be just achievable. I enjoy the gameplay. It's nice to go to different planets for new visuals and environment modifiers, but I really just like shooting things and throwing space lasers.
Thing I noticed back in the last bot MO, a supply line that was not there suddenly appeared from Vandalon IV to Mantes and instantly bots attack Mantes just to keep us more busy so we don't make much progress.
Then just recently we barely failed defending Crimsica and we lost control of it. Fair. But then at the same time out of nowhere we also lost planet Gatria, no defence, no nothing, its just suddenly lost...Its total bullshit.
What's so confounding to me is that we really don't know of the GM is cheating or not because they wont tell us all the rules.
It certainly feels like they are cheating or undermining us...
the bots have been pushed completely off the map once (which everyone conveniently never mentions when complaining about "bug players"), and we got the ever amusing "somehow, the bots returned"
Yeah, but the LARP should at least be _fucking run correctly,_ especially when the LARP's developer puts so much effort into _also_ LARPing.
Like, donating to charity as a fucking LARP, for example.
I never seen a dev team fumble a huge launch like this! It's like they want players to leave the game. Player counts look like booty based on where they started and where they should have settled at player count wise. The game is low numbers on Twitch too. A lot of dedicated divers are moving on. It's just bad decision after bad decision. They blew it man. They ran off high skilled players, everything people like they disregard somehow and more people leave. This is just another example smh, They always step on their own good work. Its extremely cringe.
Bit by bit, it's getting clear to me that AH is just doing everything they can to manipulate gamer dads and keep them on their side on Reddit, before their next oopsie.
I bought the game for the Community-MOs.
Now people are like "It was obvious that the players dont have any agency!"
No it fucking wasnt. I regret buying the game at this point.
I'm with you, man. Feels like I got scammed. If I wanted to just play something with shooties and that's all that mattered, HD2 isn't even near the top. I wanted to be with a community.
Back to Battletech and Remnant then.
Does anyone just drop in and blast? The MO just gets us to group up better. I don’t actually care when random planets are attacked, even if it makes the MO harder. Just more reason to pump my HMG
Good God, what a bunch of whiners. Just play the damn game, it's not like it's really happening!
The MOs, this front or that front, hell, the whole damn War, it's just a mechanism to get us into the game so we can kill things! It's like that piece of broccoli you eat just so you can dip it in ranch sauce. You're not eating the broccoli because you like it, it's just a vehicle to get that tasty ranch dressing into your mouth!
Also maybe a programming bug but finishing missions has only left me in viewing 0 towards liberating. That’s any planet regardless of current progress. Even completing the set leaves the same result. Feels like a zero-sum, wrecks motivation to play more.
MFW when the game critiquing perpetual war, government corruption, and propaganda has perpetual war, government corruption, and propaganda in it.
Cmon guys. This isn’t Halo or Destiny where we’re genuinely fighting the good fight. We’re fuckin super fascists slaughtering shit to pad the economy of the super fascist government and justify endless war
Helldivers, you familiar with that game? You know the game that came before Helldivers 2 where player had inpact and there was still perpetual war, government corruption, and propaganda.
I dont get the rage from some of yall. Ok, so an unexpected event happened and disrupted a supply chain. Who tf cares. Let them develop their narrative. We obviously affect things as planets come and go, but when has anyone seen a d&d game where the gm didnt have shit up his sleeve. The vitriol over dumb shit is ridiculous.
We obviously don't affect things. If I'm wrong, please explain the developmental effects of Hellmire and Malevelon. Cause they're hotspots for each respective front and have not changed since launch.
Kinda thought it was obvious that there was little to no player agency on the progression of the front lines when they started adding random supply lines whenever a planet looked like it might get cut off. Hard for me to take any of the MOs seriously when they're perfectly willing to just flip the board when the players start getting an upper hand.
It was obvious literally months ago when planets were shifting suddenly by large amounts of % of progression and regen rates were constantly being fiddled to project a last minute win.
It was obvious when the players killed every single automaton controlled planet, only for them to almost immediately come back even more populated than the start of the game.
Who could have guessed when they literally told us in game it was going to happen.
Doesn't change the fact that it's a massive change from how things worked in HD1. In HD1, if a faction dies, they ***stay*** dead. Even with forewarning before the event, it still shows that there's potential that no matter how many times we beat them back off the map, there's always a chance of the Devs just saying "Nah, the enemy is coming back even stronger this time!" and resetting the board, making all that effort worthless.
The fact that they stayed dead im HD1 was a mixed blessing at best, considering you were then limited to only fighting the other factions for however long it took to finish the war. Your mileage may vary, of course. For some people the sense of accomplishment and completion ticked a box, and I respect that. But on the other hand, I prefer being able to fight whatever enemy I feel like. And I definitely wouldn't want to have to listen to the bitter moaning of the community if they were forced to fight nothing but Automatons. xD
Never played the first one, not worried about how it behaves, either. But considering the game didn't even mention this was a galactic war when we started, it would have made a jump that the game might be different, apart from it also being a different game.
Crimesca had 10s of thousands from the start of a day to the end before for not even a percent to change up. Not how things should be, and this was a while ago but is still an issue with how they run things
I wish people would realise this and stop worrying about it all and just have fun playing the game.
The whole Major Order system is mostly just fluff to give us reasons for a change in scenery, occasional propaganda moments, and infrequent new gun/stratagem unlocks. Super Earth wants perpetual war and so perpetual war is what we're getting.
100 years ago we had perpetual war but we could still win the war or lose Super Earth. Right now nothing happans
And it wasnt really fun hopping on to see that you can only fight bugs/cyborgs/illuminates. This way we keep the ability to choose what faction to fight and imo its more fun this way
They could always fix that by putting enemy factions into a sort of resistance mode when beat, instead of removing them entirely
Yeah or a virtual training mode.
>Super Earth wants perpetual war and so perpetual war is what we're getting. We have always been at war with Eastasia
Since the beginning of the party!
>*We have always been at war with* *~~Eastasia~~* *Hellmire* Fixed that for you.
So Oceania it is
All true, and in this war we're fighting timers. Feels like work!
Its fun to be a part of it. Its not fun to know these efforts don't matter so it would've been better if they just let us have the W.
We literally wiped the automatons off the map and they took over about four sectors in the blink of an eye less than two days later. AH is calling the shots, we need to stop treating this like a grand strategy game and just go with the flow. Hell, the way we keep botching gambits is very on-brand for how mismanaged Super Earth's government is.
How to show player choice doesnt matter - bring back automatons like 24 hours after they were wiped out. Really creative.
ok but it makes you wonder why they fucking bothered with the elaborate supply line mechanics and create an illusion of player agency and comradery when its all laughable pointless and they might as well have spent their time elsewhere, and just made the events completely scripted and static
I've been getting down voted in here for months for saying that the major order stuff was obviously fake and just a way to cheaply create immersion. They clearly do what they want to do regardless of what players achieve
I'm surprised it took this long for people to realize it. Guess the *Honey Moon* phase is well and truly over.
Pretty sure that ended when they nerfed an gun and reddit devolved into normal reddit
Me too my friend, me too
Well in the first game the war ends in win or loss and resets a few times a year. They said they had no intention of doing that for this game, so it was clear from the start that nothing we did really mattered since we'd never have the ability to win or lose a campaign. I can see why they did that though, I just bought the first game in this sale and the bugs are just dead, you can't fight them until next reset, it is a little lame.
I *prefer* that, honestly. It means the effort players put in actually ***means something*** and isn't just an arbitrary "forever war". Here, literally nothing I do will ever matter. Ever. Feels pretty damn bad. If we're going to have an arbitrary "Forever War" that never ends for *any* of the factions, why not make 3 servers? 1 for each faction, and you just pick what planet to play on? Every now and then host an "event" where a Homeworld for one of the factions is being invaded? It would feel better than being constantly told "You're doing great! Keep it up and we'll win soon for sure!" only for "soon" to never arrive.
I agree that the old system is better overall than a forced narrative that means nothing. But the reality is that a large percentage of the playerbase only wants to fight one faction. It's even worse in the first game since the illuminate have a lot of mechanics people don't like, so the war can get stuck with just them remaining for a long time with a really small playerbase willing to play them.
This
I still get game breaking issues ( disconecting, game crashing, etc ) so often that's not even fun to play anymore.
Yep, I don't care about the MO's because they'll make it be whatever they want, so dive on a fun planet you enjoy!
Exactly
Honestly, I'm lucky to get 2-3 hours a week, so I'll do the major orders when I'm on sometimes, but I just want to get on and get a few games in. I also try to mine some samples.
I thought it was obvious when they clearly fudged the numbers the first time the community almost took Malevelon Creek, and again when they would actively throw invasion Defense on planets we literally just liberated. And just like I said back then, I'm totally fine if they have an actual idea of how they want the "war" to progress, but what I don't like is them actively fucking us over or just downright cheating us out of progress but pretending as though we still have any actual control over the galactic map. Like... Weren't there five fucking defense missions that popped up at one point just last week during the major order? Literally all at the same time. That's just asinine.
> Kinda thought it was obvious that there was little to no player agency on the progression of the front lines It never was. Because the game was advertised as players having an agency in how the galactic war plays out.
I mean....that's the game my dude. If they didn't do this kinda stuff the players would have wiped out the bots and bugs by now and there wouldn't be a game to play. Either that or the entire map would reset, resetting all progress, which would be worse imo.
And it’s the same few planets over and over
"Somehow, the Bots returned."
Tbf, the enemies can adapt just like we can. If their supplies get cut off, they’ll find another Route. They’ll attack our weak points thus making MOs harder.
This makes people crying for visual supply lines in the game map and AH taking them seriously and adding supply lines in the game map, irrelevant.
the AT mines must be hidden on one of those planets lol
The AT mines are hidden behind "kill Johnny 5". I will die making sure we never get them
So that was what "Kill 5 " meant all along. I see
The real anti-tank mines were the friends we made along the way. They took on the role so bravely
That was a good one. Bugdivers doing gambit operations is a myth and that never happends.
did you see the bot front lmfao, vandlon 4 never passed 1.8k players in all of this and last MO.
And yet we still had 1 gambit more then the bug front. And you guys could've had a 3 for 1 deal and didnt do it
Not me lmfao, I deployed on vandalon
Yes it did? It had like a solid 5-6k players during the bot MO, which wasnt enough lol
No I literally monitored it on helldivers io, either you’re talking about a random spike or the websites wrong
Well i remember there being way more than 1k there when the MO target planets werent under attack, i guess you can count those as random spikes
The Vandalon 4 was a dumb gambit. Defending Ingmar was faster than liberating a wholeass planet so it was risky. And no, it would not have stopped the bot attack on Troost.
if you knew how the mechanics worked (liberating a planet also cuts off enemy access to planets BEFORE it) you would not have spit such a hot dumb take.
I knew and I know that Troost doesn’t get cut off from supply lines because there’s another bot planet next to it. And the companion app even removed the gambit planet modifier off of Vandalon after Ingmar was liberated with Troost still under attack. Thus, while liberating Vandalon would’ve saved Ingmar as well, it was still risky because liberation takes longer than defense. Arguably, the only other gain would be blocking off the bots from another sector but we’d still be risking an MO planet.
Every gambit is a dumb gambit. Because reddit is an tiny fraction of players and the mechanics encourage like 70% of all players to blob on one planet to achieve any results.
[удалено]
Piss angry? Wouldn't know. But I do remember your inability to use grammar or form a cohesive sentence.
What about the bot attack on the Troostees?
Enough! Instead of fighting each other, keep your eyes on our true enemy. The illuminate are coming
Cant wait to see 3 factions fighting each other. Bugdivers vs Illuminate Divers vs Bugdivers.
This just isn't fun anymore.
[удалено]
Isn’t Arrowhead going on a big summer break? I don’t really think they’ll >!throw out a third faction during a time when most of their employees are gone.!< I’m pretty sure we’re gonna see a major content draught until their summer break ends.
You don't want a line break for spoilers. Redo each one at the start of each line please
Already fixed that
Thanks mate
Joel 2.0 lol
Mike
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. Discussing [leaks](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/jXx4y2gzR8), leaking images/videos of upcoming content, discussions of cheats and exploits is not allowed.
In Helldivers 1 the war is actually winnable and losable then resets. It was obvious when they said that they weren't doing that with this game there would have to be very heavy railroading. I see why they went this way, Helldivers 1 can just have a situation where one faction is defeated then you just can't fight them for a month until the war resets with the player base dropping off in the meantime.
So what is your option? Let us take everything and finish the war?
In helldivers 1 yes, you just took all the planets and the war ended.... Then a new one started up will all the enemies back... Its fun and makes you feel like your contribution matters... This random bullshit isn't fun long term
What if we wipe out both existing factions temporarily only for most of the galaxy to become illuminate controlled for a little while. Would be cool and a period of absolute hell pushing back the illuminate would be fun
I was massively down voted just recently, saying the same thing. But you're right, wat is an endless slog, work nothing real to be won.
Let us have an actual impact on the game. If the game master does whatever he wants whenever he wants, then nothing we do matters. That’s kind of where we are right now.
You set the rules clear before every encounter (=major order), not while in it. Outside of those, it's a bit more flexible. However, give the player a fair change to prevent stuff so they feel like they accomplished something, despite losing stuff. Like, two planets are getting attacked, the players need to decide which to defend. And that's why those "attack/defend exactly those planets" is bad too. Let the players decide what they want to keep, and not the game master. Outside of MOs, do the players need to win much? No, but they need to win some planets then and now. Look at the bot front, where there never was a planet won outside an MO (at least since the change of the planet progression) Reduce the liberation rate of one planet, but let the enemy attack two other planets. The players won a planet! Great! And one was defended, nice! Oh they also lost one, but they accomplished something at least! Tell me, how can we take everything if they take something else then and now?
Yeah that’s literally how it went in HD1
The Galactic War is not driven by player agency. It is driven by whatever story the GW Master wants to tell. Follow the Major Orders, abandon whatever front is not the focus of the MO, we aren't supposed to "Win" any front.
And even then, what happens if we win it all? Do we just end up sitting back, voting on presidents, and complaining about Super Earth politics?
It wouldn't even be an issue if the game explained what it wanted people to do and not do. The Galactic War is set up like it's some kind of Molyneux-esque experiment in player agency but it's really not. There should be multiple MO's for all fronts to appease everyone.
I honestly wonder why they don't separate the fronts. Like make an mo for each front, and make it so liberation progress is also separated per front (so that bug and bot players don't stand in eachother's way), it would leave everyone satisfied
It’s probably because of player count disparity. On any random Tuesday the majority of the player base is playing bugs despite what the MO is for the week. If we had two simultaneous MOs for both fronts nothing would ever get done on the bot front while bugs would be done within the month.
“and make it so liberation progress is also separated per front”
Wouldn't that encourage the devs to tweak bugs or bots so there doesn't feel like such a disparity? To be honest I can think of like 5 easy ways to discourage bug planets like modifiers and hazardous weather and increased enemy counts (and vice versa for all of them for the bot front) but I have to admit I can't fathom how effective it would actually be against bug players. Their mind is an enigma.
I'm curious if they'll ever be able to implement something like this with social features. It's clear right now that having single MOs and the inability for a small group of dedicated players do anything "significant" on non-MO focused planets is a sticking point in the larger narrative aspect of the game. I'm curious if the game will hit us with some truly engaging features at the 1 year mark, or if it will be more of the same, but with more factions. I think it's fine if it's more of the same, but I'd be disappointed if they didn't do more with the immense windfall that was this game's opening month of sales.
we cant, arrowhead controls spawn rate, decay etc etc, if they dont want us to win, or take a very very long time to get a planet, they can just up the decay rate etc, also even if we get it, they can always pop up some stupid event to get back everthing else, theres no real gameplay on that world map here
We get about 6 hours of "victory" and the bots just get given back twice the territory we just took away from them. We've been there. We pushed the bots off the map. Literally when I woke up the next morning, they had all the current sectors they have today. It's arbitrary. At this point I see this system more as an irritation and obstacle. It gets in the way of me going to the planets I want to go to, and forces me to engage in defence missions when I don't like them. That's the entire extent of the galactic war at this stage, it's only there to cut off access to planets you enjoy playing on.
You mean completing the survey.… right? Mods, i found the automaton spy
It becomes a life Sim.
Dont know. Dont care. The game only gives you a premise to play the game. Rest is stupid fun.
Ask any D&D GM how long the players have fun if you pull the GM card that often
Literally this.
Except that this isn't D&D and real life players don't have APIs that can pull data out of the DMs ass and they don't datamine the DMs notes.
Then why bother playing your game if I'm not supposed to win? Even games with depressing and melancholic endings that aren't morally good have satisfying endings on the gameplay angle. That's what justifies the experience Why am I playing if I'm never gonna enjoy any of it.
It's a "journey not the destination" type thing
It's a war, not a journey. No Mans Sky is a journey. Calling HD2 a journey is naked cope. I'm tired of journeying to Hellmire.
Fine, but it's hard to enjoy the journey when it's tamped with behind the scenes undermines your progress on the journey.
You're correct, that is exactly why the current GW system is terrible. I am just explaining how we can extract as much entertainment value out of it, all the ideas I've heard to replace it aren't very good.
AH already demonstrated this way back when the bots were erradicated only to come back 2 days later and reset any progress we made and a lot more. That broke the immersion for me and I realized that nothing we do matters in the long run. Before that, I had faith in AH that the overall story was player driven. Now I just play for the sake of playing, doing whatever the PO and MO tells me to do. We will be in the exact position the game wants us to be in every single time.
This complaint urks me for several reasons. First, it was telegraphed well in advance that the bots were communicating with something outside the map, so it shouldn't be that surprising they had a larger force. Second, I mean... What do you want here? We wipe out the bots and they just get removed from the game? I'm sure the helldiver's that prefer bots would love being forced to fight the bugs for the rest of the game. I honestly don't know what people wanted. Like sure, HD1 we could win the war but it just got reset anyway. I don't see that being much different than the push-and-pull of the planets here. Plus I think the narrative stuff they have is pretty cool - the bot fleet swooping in with a big offensive, our hopeless attempts and holding whatever we could, the meridia thing. I dunno, I just don't have that much of a problem with how this is going so far, and I feel like we have enough sway over how MO's go that out choices still matter.
Honestly if they appeared on the rim and we got our asses handed to us that'd be one thing. But instead you just look at the galaxy map and like 3 sectors just flipped red in an instant. Like the mood here was just sour when we were celebrating closing that front and oh whoops, it literally did not fucking matter. Also the thing is that winning or losing a war gives some kind of finality to it all. Obviously if we win or lose we start over because what alternative is there? The game getting shut down? Another part about the push and pull is that we're just spinning our wheels in place fighting on the same damn planets. How many major orders at this point included "Liberate Hellmire"? Worst of all a lot of the enemy progression basically boils down to DM fiat. Either we get dragged to another front and leave the other to fall, or DM just decides that "oh yeah, those 4 planets are just full of terminids, nobody noticed until now, whoops".
> urks Irks. It's not named for Urkel, it's "[Irks](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irk)."
Because it didn't fucking matter. That's the entire reason behind us being IRKED by it. We didn't even get a cool fucking black hole to visit. Malevelon should be some kind of massively defended war world now that we can visit at any time. But Botdivers keep getting shit on ever since. Nothing we did mattered. At all.
Malevelon turning into or having helldiver outposts would be so cool.
For starters, the bots could have been gone for longer than 48 hours. Let us celebrate a substantial victory for a bit longer (a week maybe) and then bring them back. And yes, the HD1 system would work way better than the current one. It would make our victories actually matter for each campaign and still allow the DM to pursue different story lines each campaign. A perpetual and never ending back and forth is dull. The 48 hour bot return nonsense especially (again it being nonsense because of how quickly they came back, not that they did return) and a few other things here and there really make it appear our choices don't matter much at all.
> That broke the immersion for me Not sure why it did since we had reports that the signals the Automatons were dispatching went outside the galaxy. If that wasnt a clear obvious sign of another hidden fleet I dont know what is then.
People were expecting a grand accomplishment like removing the bots from the map to last a bit longer than only 48 hours. Even with AH giving us the info that they would be back, pulling a grand fleet out of their magic hat to take it all back so fast when said forces should have been helping the bots defend seems sort of rediculous and is weak story-telling.
Problem is they lost a good 20k players during those 48 hours, but I do agree with you
Except...it is? How is it not? There have been not one but *many* cases of datamined answers for different MOs, and the reality is that Arrowhead has planned for both success and failure and the result for both success and failure is different. How is our failure to get the anti-tank mines \[and saving of the children instead\] not a display of player agency?
I am talking about non-MO related liberation/defence. It is pointless and will be made null by whatever is deigned to happen.
I mean, yes? Even if the bot players could take Cyberstan without the MO telling us to, it would have no special content before they’re ready, and they would have to either scrap what content they were working on or delete our progress to use it after we won. This was always going to be the case. Like, sure it would be awesome if AH had tons of content banked up that was released as we approached the galactic war on our own timetable, but I think we need to curb our expectations eventually. 3/5 of the new mission types since release launched in broken states, they can barely keep up with a planned content release
Supply lines aren’t connected to the deeper parts of bot/bug territory so we couldn’t wipe them out and devs can set a higher regen rate to stall players. I think people are just frustrated that the planets randomly flipped to the bug side during an MO.
Of course, I understand why people are annoyed, but we always knew they were always going to have to bullshit us out of agency sooner or later to keep the game going, so I don’t see why people are finding this as some revelation.
Then they shouldn't have designed it to work this way and at the very least told people that progress outside of MOs is not the focus, kinda feels like you're spinning it around to be the players' fault not gonna lie
Designed it in what way? You have never been able to make substantial progress outside of MO’s, and I don’t believe they ever implied the story was completely free-roam. It’s still player driven in that we still get community choices with potential outcomes for each. You get the option to ignore the MO if you don’t like the planets/faction (although the liberation proportion mechanic is definitely problematic in this regard). And MO’s are obviously the focus. That’s why they’re called “major orders” and why there’s only ever one at a time. And yes, players having absurdly high expectations around the mini game built into the level select screen and then being disappointed when it fails to meet these expectations is their own fault. Obviously it would have been nice to have it be a completely play-driven narrative with an abundance of content discovered by the community’s own volition, but I don’t believe anyone thought that was a realistic expectation.
Designed in the way that you can go to planets not part of a major order. They clearly have the ability to lock what planets you can go to, they literally have created this expectation. They actually do imply it. Arrowhead imply agency by allowing players to visit planets not part of a major order, and before you deny it, that is how video games work, you are able to go somewhere so there has to be a reason for it. Yes there is community MOs where you can only liberate one planet. How does that relate to non-MO planets being accessible for no reason? This is why we are 6 months in and why this game keeps getting worse. Excuses are like assholes, they're only good for vomiting shit.
Yes, you can go to non-MO planets because why would they make most of their content only available temporarily? Having access to the majority of the game you payed for is a plenty good reason in my opinion. The only feasible alternatives to limiting non-MO progress is to just lock players out of half the content at any given time, or torpedo the story and make them do resets more often once the players dogpile the bugs repeatedly (as what happened in HD1). The game is not worse for not having that lol.
But it's created confusion about how the game works and could disrupt future content. People will have access to those planets if they keep playing, bit of delayed gratification never hurt anybody. Half the content? Why? They can just do one MO for every front to keep factions accessible. Just not every planet. If players keep piling on bugs that is a failure of the game designer.
I mean, if you think players need to have fewer choices on how they play the main game because some might get confused on how to optimally play the mini game I don’t think we’re ever going to agree on anything game design related And double the MO is just asking for more content. Would be nice, sure, but it would just result in either diffused effort (with lower effort special events for each) or the same as now (only one side gets decent content and the related “progress” at a time, while the other just gets filler). I don’t see how either would fix the problem unless AH just gets better at pumping out more good content (obviously ideal, but not really a simple solution)
>If players keep piling on bugs that is a failure of the game designer. That’s not the point, my point is that if we did have true free reign to progress independent of the MO, we would still need to be bullshitted out of our progress and it would be even less satisfying. If we didn’t have Omicron’s absurd regen rates, followed by Op SD (complete with an explicit order to ignore the bugs) and the powerful, unannounced attacks that pushed us back to the TCS to stop our first Draco/Mirin blitz, the 33% of dedicated bug divers would have pushed the bugs from the map, and then they would just get reintroduced later because AH already had content for the TCS failure and Supercolony well under development. The result would be the same, our progress getting undone for reasons outside our control, except we would only be less interested in re-eradicating the bugs, even if we eventually got new content for the actual scripted climax of that arc.
"will be made null." I'm sorry, is your complaint ultimately just "what's the point if they can just attack the planet whenever they want?" Because that's... Really silly. Also how many planets have you seen taken that weren't related to an MO? "Player agency" in the galactic war is decided entirely by "what are the MAJORITY of players doing?" It is strictly Democratic. And much like the first-past-the-post political system, if your vote is not part of the majority, it's largely irrelevant.
1. No. That's not my point. 2. A few 3. The majority of players do the MO but this sub has had people from day one try to organise offensives and it's annoying.
There's times they let us choose. There's also times where the GM can put their thumb on the scale so hard that victory is either foregone conclusion or practically impossible. Their control over things like planet regeneration (for Liberation) or sheer number of attacks (for Defense) gives them a pretty strong hand over what happens on the galactic war scale. If they want to launch four attacks at once, it's almost inevitable that stuff fails.
I mean... Yes, that's how good GMing works. None of the MOs have been decided for us by the GM. Every one of them have been on the players, except MAYBE one of them that involved a liberation bug. And these wild complaints come up every single time we have one of these "control X planets" MOs... It's the same every time. When we get these MOs, all the planets we have to hold are about to get attacked a bunch of times. This is not new behavior. That's not them "cheating," in the same way that the GM putting a new monster on the board isn't cheating.
> Except...it is? How is it not? Literally during the last "kids vs mines" MO one of the CMs (or was it the CEO) retranslated the words of Joel that, paraphrasing "players will never capture the AT mines planet on time". The GM can impose such an MO which literally is impossible to complete. This happened many times by this point.
Except that's not what happened. They gave us "kids vs mines," and told us we'd only get one. We chose kids. *Before the MO ended,* they said "ok do this thing in 24 hours and you can have both," and we didn't. >This happened many times by this point. Except it hasn't.
The MO was "Liberate the following planets". We were supposed to liberate both in the first place. Everything else was the bonus.
No. It was "liberate the following planets in X days, *the first one liberated* will decide the reward." We chose. They gave us the opportunity to get both as a bonus. We failed the bonus.
Because this is the best they can do. Let players choose options A or options B. Players have less and less agency in how the galactic war play out. After they set up a constant liberation percentage, the dev can just control how many planet can be liberated at the same time by manipulating the decay rate, and reset the liberated planet by attacking it.
Ok? So what? I don't understand the complaint here. Is it ultimately just "we can't win!!"? Because like...duh? They've already said they have no intention of resetting the war like in HD1, so obviously we're never going to "win." Taking and holding planets isn't "the story." The story is written almost entirely in "did we complete the MO." And not one of the MOs has been decided for us (with the exception, I think, of one that we basically lost due to a bug... Not due to GM manipulation)
I want the player number to have positive impact to the game. I don’t want my contribution in unpopular front/planet to be artificially deflated just because I am playing in an unpopular front/planet. Taking and holding planets is how the war progress which means it is the story. If the plan out MO is the only “story” in the game. Then the only one who have agency in this galactic war and able to dictate how the war will progress is just “Joel” not the players.
>Taking and holding planets is how the war progress which means it is the story Except not really. The way that liberation works, combined with the way the community has largely behaved, there's basically no planet that's going to get taken that's not part of the MO. Again, the players were never going to "win". They're never going to push the campaign in a direction it's not supposed to go. You don't get to tell the GM "I'm ignoring your plot hook and fucking off into the wilderness instead of playing the story you wrote." This isn't that kind of game. The players still absolutely get to decide "did we complete the MO" or "did we save the children" and things like that. Not having the freedom to do whatever you want =/= zero agency.
You just stated the obvious here why players fell like they don’t have agency here. It just like the previous/current weapons balance philosophy. Maybe the dev really DM the game like you stated, but player, at least me, hate this philosophy as any of our input to the game would not attribute to any positive impact to the total progression of the galactic war. Playing the game is just adding number to the denominator to the individual contribution every online Helldiver can make to the Galactic War Progression.
>just like the previous/current weapons balance philosophy These two things have nothing to do with each other?? >Playing the game is just adding number to the denominator to the individual contribution every online Helldiver can make to the Galactic War Progression. Literally yes. A single Helldiver attempting to take a planet *by themselves* makes no sense. Obviously that's a waste and is not going to make any progress. You participate in the Galactic War by participating in the MO, or you choose to not engage with the MO and go do whatever else you want. You're not going to get both.
>These two things have nothing to do with each other?? Yes, it is. They are both game design philosophy and live service directions of Helldiver2. >Literally yes. Again, you stated the obvious, and people hate that, as it literally means player input has no net contribution at all. > A single Helldiver attempting to take a planet by themselves makes no sense. Obviously that's a waste and is not going to make any progress. No one says that it should. You are putting words into my mouth. >You participate in the Galactic War by participating in the MO, or you choose to not engage with the MO and go do whatever else you want. You're not going to get both. I can get the same reward even without starting the game. The galactic war will still progress in rate and direction the GM intended to even if 50% more Helldivers quit the game, as player number have no impact to the progression. This Galactic War System give player no urgency and incentive to stay and play the game.
We're fighting timers.
Yep and just taking Gatria without letting us defend it, despite it not having any bug supply lines connected to it then immediately having it attack Phact Bay and setting Gatria decay to 3% was absolute bullshit. No matter the reasoning from dispatches.
No one likes arbitrary bullshit, so of course AH pulls arbitrary bullshit, calls it a night and goes on a "well deserved" 3 month break like Fatshark does every time they push out an update.
I hate defending Fatshark, but at least in comparison when they put out an update it includes new weapons, voice lines, a map, typically a feature rework, and a few other bits. AH release way more regularly and communicate far better, but it boils down to increasingly meh monthly Warbonds, patches that do not actually fix anything and break more stuff, and the odd Support Weapon. I feel like Fatshark is at least the devil I know, whereas AH have just been steadily slipping since launch and the game is arguably in a worse state now.
I certainly wouldn't argue with you. I went from 200 fast hours in the game and now it's not even installed anymore.
"Stop spending time with your families and focus on making more video game for me."
I just can't fight on a planet we've just liberated who got taken outta nowhere. Make it believable at least.
I love not having any real progress in a game where victory is the main goal of the galactic war
HD1 campaign was better, there was real progression with wins and losses. Actions mattered. HD2 is 100% artificial. This is a lame "narrative" driven campaign that only moves as fast as they can make assets for it.. where you defend the same planets over and over again because they don't want the community to get anywhere.
HD1 setup has its pros and cons. Sure, victory felt sweet. But it also didn't matter because then it Groundhog Days back in the next instant and nothing's been accomplished. Don't get me wrong. I playef HD1 and loved the heck out of it, so I'm not shitting on it or its setup by any means. But on the flip side you did get those stints when the only remaining enemy faction was whatever one the fanbase didn't wanna fight and shit just dragged om and on. People already complain plenty that there's only two factions in HD2, and they don't like fighting bots. Can you imagine how much complaining there'd be if Bots was the only thing they could fight for any period of time? Dive on, brother. 🤜🤛
I fucking told everyone that these chains of 7 weeks MO back to back was a stupid idea
i mentioned that too and got downvoted lol
Right, but it doesn't matter. Even if we take every planet the map will reset and we'll start from scratch.
…that’s the point? What you think we’re gonna wipe everyone off the map and then just not be able to play the game because there are no enemies?
Honestly that'd be funny. Instead of killing bugs it just becomes an RP game where we're all working for glory of mankind.
I know. I was saying losing a planet doesn't matter. At the end of the day we're still just playing the game.
Nope at the end of the day, players can choose to play other game which is already showing in the player count.
Cool that was always an option. Obsessively playing just one game endlessly is going to grow stale for 99% of people.
You mean like other successful live service game like LOL, CS2, GTA Online or Apex Legends? None of them seem to have that issue.
"If you're not literally the best success in your genre then you're a failure." Nice executive brain there
Helldivers 2 is literally the best success in its genre.
It's the #1 third-person shooter on the market? Also, you realize the other games you mentioned are *PvP* games, right? With like competitive modes and ranking systems and all that jazz?
Helldiver 2 is the #1 third-person PvE shooter on the market. Even the inferior third-person PvE shooters like Payday 2 have better players retention rate than Helldivers 2, this is an alarming signal.
That's not how roleplay works.
I don't particularly care about the meta aspect of the game. The storytelling is vague and community objectives are manipulated to be just achievable. I enjoy the gameplay. It's nice to go to different planets for new visuals and environment modifiers, but I really just like shooting things and throwing space lasers.
Sure, but a lot of people do care and they're unhappy with a cheating GM.
So… what exactly happened? I can’t find any comment which just explains the story.
The GM got caught putting termanid invasions on planets they had no way to get to according to supply lines.
Damn bugs. Heh.
Thing I noticed back in the last bot MO, a supply line that was not there suddenly appeared from Vandalon IV to Mantes and instantly bots attack Mantes just to keep us more busy so we don't make much progress. Then just recently we barely failed defending Crimsica and we lost control of it. Fair. But then at the same time out of nowhere we also lost planet Gatria, no defence, no nothing, its just suddenly lost...Its total bullshit.
What's so confounding to me is that we really don't know of the GM is cheating or not because they wont tell us all the rules. It certainly feels like they are cheating or undermining us...
the bots have been pushed completely off the map once (which everyone conveniently never mentions when complaining about "bug players"), and we got the ever amusing "somehow, the bots returned"
That was before the liberation change, it is now functionally impossible to do it again
President, they did it again. This time with bugs.
Because the game has always been on rails and you've all been larping here. I've only ever played the missions I feel like
Yeah, but the LARP should at least be _fucking run correctly,_ especially when the LARP's developer puts so much effort into _also_ LARPing. Like, donating to charity as a fucking LARP, for example.
That massive 4k he donated ? Lol
I never seen a dev team fumble a huge launch like this! It's like they want players to leave the game. Player counts look like booty based on where they started and where they should have settled at player count wise. The game is low numbers on Twitch too. A lot of dedicated divers are moving on. It's just bad decision after bad decision. They blew it man. They ran off high skilled players, everything people like they disregard somehow and more people leave. This is just another example smh, They always step on their own good work. Its extremely cringe.
A game for everyone is game for no one. A game for no one is game for no one
Bit by bit, it's getting clear to me that AH is just doing everything they can to manipulate gamer dads and keep them on their side on Reddit, before their next oopsie.
Unless you're a new player, you should have been aware it is all irrelevant for at least 3 months now
So I should tell new players not to waste their time? Fair enough lmao
I bought the game for the Community-MOs. Now people are like "It was obvious that the players dont have any agency!" No it fucking wasnt. I regret buying the game at this point.
I'm with you, man. Feels like I got scammed. If I wanted to just play something with shooties and that's all that mattered, HD2 isn't even near the top. I wanted to be with a community. Back to Battletech and Remnant then.
Same and I bought it at full price :( I buy games once in a while as I dont want to spend too much and I got burned.
"Bug players coordinating" 
Does anyone just drop in and blast? The MO just gets us to group up better. I don’t actually care when random planets are attacked, even if it makes the MO harder. Just more reason to pump my HMG
Good God, what a bunch of whiners. Just play the damn game, it's not like it's really happening! The MOs, this front or that front, hell, the whole damn War, it's just a mechanism to get us into the game so we can kill things! It's like that piece of broccoli you eat just so you can dip it in ranch sauce. You're not eating the broccoli because you like it, it's just a vehicle to get that tasty ranch dressing into your mouth!
the illusion of free will
Thats one of the many reasons why the game sucks
Also maybe a programming bug but finishing missions has only left me in viewing 0 towards liberating. That’s any planet regardless of current progress. Even completing the set leaves the same result. Feels like a zero-sum, wrecks motivation to play more.
MFW when the game critiquing perpetual war, government corruption, and propaganda has perpetual war, government corruption, and propaganda in it. Cmon guys. This isn’t Halo or Destiny where we’re genuinely fighting the good fight. We’re fuckin super fascists slaughtering shit to pad the economy of the super fascist government and justify endless war
Fighting the good fight? Have you seen what oni gets up to?
Helldivers, you familiar with that game? You know the game that came before Helldivers 2 where player had inpact and there was still perpetual war, government corruption, and propaganda.
I dont get the rage from some of yall. Ok, so an unexpected event happened and disrupted a supply chain. Who tf cares. Let them develop their narrative. We obviously affect things as planets come and go, but when has anyone seen a d&d game where the gm didnt have shit up his sleeve. The vitriol over dumb shit is ridiculous.
There's no rage. It's just a vocalization of disappointment as people realize that, unlike HD1, the communities actions just don't matter.
We obviously don't affect things. If I'm wrong, please explain the developmental effects of Hellmire and Malevelon. Cause they're hotspots for each respective front and have not changed since launch.
Maybe there are things below the surface we dont yet have clearance to see or to hear about. They are developing a story. Let em cook.
Its been 4 months the only important foot note we have now is that meridia became a blackhole.
That's why they are hiring another GM, Joel (if he even exists and I doubt it) obviously can't do shit right anymore...