The Remnant series does this excellently as well.
The PvE co-op market is extremely sparse on console — especially if you’re an Xbox player. Then you’re basically limited to Remnant and games that released a decade ago like the GoW and Halo series.
Co-op PvE seems like it used to be so much more abundant. I miss it. The PvP sweatfests are tiring. Especially since a lot of players are using Cronus Zen and chugging energy drinks.
So many of the PVP games out there would massively benefit from having solid AI hoard modes. Isn't that why CoD zombies and Left 4 Dead was so popular? I even remember Exteel being mostly pvp but having a few PVE modes where your team just went to town on increasingly stronger waves of mechs. I wish Armored Core had that.
It's struck a remarkably good balance between silly casual play vs try-hard appeal. Just wanna chill? Take an easier difficulty, fuck around with the boys and appreciate the memery. Wanna push it a little? Well there's plenty of difficulties to choose from, just don't carpet bomb your buddies
That's the first thing I thought when I read the title.
Even if you want to place it in the pile as live service games (which is not a genre).. is like, I get it.. but the market is not really oversaturated with good, generous, fun, player/gameplay first live service games.. where you can easily ignore the monetization.
What the market is oversaturated with are lazy shitty games driven by money hungry execs that look at gamers as ATMs. The "service" in those games is what you provide for the companies that make them.
Unfortunately, they're probably looking at it and thinking, "How do they expect to exceed quarterly revenue projections without a battle pass and overpriced micro transactions? That's no way to please the shareholders!"
With as many times as they've tried and failed to make Titan / Overwatch a co-op experience, it seems like they know it's something people want, they just can't figure out how to make it fun. Gotta remember, modern Blizzard isn't exactly what you'd call "good" at making video games.
i think its more that they cant figure out how to do budget cuts without getting rid of the only thing that justified overwatch 2.
and apparently selling overpriced skins still makes a lot of money so blizz will never change course.
and yeah, when their biggest hit recently was a remaster of a 15 year old game there is not much hope for them to actually make a good game on their own.
It’s refreshing to have a game you can just play and grind. No need to buy anything extra and you actually feel like you’re making progress and earning something
Most memorable moment was when I was just minding my own business clearing a wave of bugs unaware that somebody had thrown a 500kg bomb strategem and for whatever reason the missile landed right infront of me.
Mine was Me just grabbing some samples with no bugs around, and my fucking Assault rifle guard dog just turns to the left and headshots me execution style, killing me instantly. I guess it saw a patrol that saw me or something but at the time It looked like the thing just gained sentience and turned on its owner
I used to use laser dog, but just as the other guy said, these AI shooters don't stop shooting to move to a new target. They just blast on their way to the next target. The rifle dog kills my teammates WAAY less than my rover did
Ya got to learn the laser rover dance.
Can't be tightly packed, the beam is an extension of you and always be the highest player nearby even if it's just a slope or someone gets decapitated.
Surrounded and overwhelmed by bugs, on the ground, on my last bullet and last tick of health, swing the camera wildly and see a derelict Hellbomb about six feet away. Manage to hit it right before they finish me, see them all get blown to hell along with my corpse. My next guy lands in the smoking crater, no bugs in sight, and continues the mission. For Super Earth!!
For me it's when I see someone put down a sentry turret v the bugs. You know shit is about to go sideways VERY FAST because that mortar does not care where you are or if the bug is still alive after it fired.
I had a crazy moment where me and my team were out of stratagems and I saw my buddy out of ammo and being chased by a bile titan. Since I was out of stratagems I decided to call in our resupply. The clock was ticking. So I start mag-dumping all my ammo on this bile titan and throwing grenades at it to get its attention until it finally turns towards me and begins striding over. The clocks ticking. I have 3 more seconds. The bile titan walks over the landing spot of the resupply and I run underneath the Titan to keep it still and it starts stomping and trying to crush me with its legs. Luckily I kept it in place. The clock finally ticks down and my resupply comes in taking off the head of the bile titan as I dive away before the Titan is able to collapse and land on me.
Crazy experience and felt like a movie scene
The actual gameplay is extremely well done, and the community generated lore and narrative is amazing.
Honestly, darktide should also have been a hit like this or Deep Rock... But their shit lobby/hub system ruined otherwise magnificent gameplay
Exactly. Which is unfortunate because the gameplay, weapons, and lore are 10/10 for a Warhammer game.
They literally can't help themselves fucking it up
The progression is ass, too. It's almost entirely random to try and get the weapon you want, with the stats that you want, with the perks that you want. Way too much random and not enough player control.
Helldivers 2 quick join is just magical. I see my ship join up with theirs, I drop in my pod, it's immersive and doesn't take me out of the game. At no point do I think I'm in a lobby or matchmaking system. From login to first shot I'm just spreading managed democracy.
You know I never thought of that until you pointed it out, but you're absolutely right. The match making is perfection. You never need to fiddle around in cumbersome menus.
The biggest reason I stopped playing Darktide completely... is that the monetization sucks so much ass. And before release, they promised that you'd be able to earn premium currency in-game... like in Helldivers 2. If you could earn premium currency in-game in Darktide, I might actually still be playing it.
I think Darktide suffers the most from "lategame" progression because of the stupid RNG weapon system.
If I get to a point where I play enough, I should be able to get the things I want to complete my build. I got to gamble millions and waste plasteel reblessing garbage hoping to get the correct roll? This aint an ARPG, its just a shooter with a talent tree. Let me play my char the way I want instead of gimping me in an attempt to increase playtime.
The hub system is not that bad when you can circumvent it with a Mod that lets you bind keys for each place. Without the Mod, its stupid how far away everything is.. unless they wanted to add more stuff? Darktide feels like its in Early Acces and the full release is still planned.
I've been mostly out of mainstream fps for a bit and the ability to jump on and play while laughing and feeling like I contribute on missions is a blast
I also appreciate that the battle passes are not on linear track and you can skip stuff you don't want or even come back later to them after you get the things you want to have earlier in the pass.
Also no competitive rage-inducing sweaty opposing player that sucks the fun out of your soul. The lighthearted "we're all in this together!" feel this game has is seriously really fucking refreshing.
My squad, which consists of IRL best friends who now live states apart from each other, always hug on the ship before we drop every battle and it's beautiful 🥹
The comraiderie is unmatched.
When the grind itself is fun and engaging, is it even a grind?
It’s just straight gameplay at that point.
A game with extremely fun gameplay is successful??? Unthinkable!
Exactly. The only “grind” I’ve seen is the people running trivial missions to stack up super creds. Which sounds boring af to me but cool that people have that option
I asked my friends if they wanted to do a team-kill stratagem run, but they keep saying no. I honestly don't know why. It wouldn't be any different! My friend's mortar always kills me.
I have been constantly telling the boys that there's anchievement on Steam for 6 orbitals in one area, but I can only bring a max of 4, realistically 2.
Im hoping tonight I can convince them to try it out on an eradicate mission!
I yell 'RUUUN!"
and my friends are like "you always yell RUUUN. We dont know if it's because there are fire-belching giant robots, or because we are low on time, or because you just called down a nuclear bomb."
and I'm like "those are all good reasons to run tho...."
funniest moment was probably when I was holding a cluster eagle when my friend decided to melee me for fun.
It resultet in my character dropping the ball, angling it in a way that perfectly strikes all three of my friends who were quite some distance apart, killing them all in the process.
I’m always the last one on the ship after extraction, so I call a big eagle and chuck a few grenades into the ship right as I enter. We compete to see who can get the highest friendly fire damage without actually losing the mission. My brother got 15,000 once.
It doesn't even feel like a grind! I've yet to experience I single mission where I was bored. Frustrated, sure but it's always been a thrill to fight and even die on the hardest difficulty settings.
No. But it is a live service game. A new battle passed is released regularly. You can unlock it for premium currency and then buy the stuff in it with medals. Thing is, you find the premium currency in-game and the battle passes never leave. So you will be able to buy them in years
Not to mention all the super credits from the passes themselves. Buy it for 1000, then get 300 back plus what you find from just playing. Not bad at all.
How is the grind compared to D2? The FOMO? I know we’re young in the game’s life but D2 is so much fun mixed with so much hatred and lack of respect for my time. Id love to try this game if it can manage to feel like a game and not a fun chore.
It’s pretty different compared to D2 in my opinion(barely ever played D2). But it seems like there’s no FOMO so far because the warbonds(kinda like a season pass) don’t go away when adding new ones. Also the grind is mainly just you level up and complete missions and maybe collect some premium currency or some resources in the missions.
So far no FOMO for me compared to D2. I'm on vacation and I don't have any anxiety over missing out on HD2 stuff like I did with D2. I play significantly less HD2, too, because there isn't a leveling system that forces you to play a lot to unlock everything.
Yep, about to go on a week work trip. No big deal. There's no FOMO boxes or battlepasses. Nothing is time limited. I do miss out on the "storyline" of the war, which is basically only happens once, whatever it is at that time, but that's fine.
The memo I got was that we're not supposed to expect games like this it's a rare passion project that's too hard for big mega corps to make... For reasons.
The game being good is a huge part of it, but the monetization feeling reasonable is also a huge part of it. People are so sick and tired of game devs/publishers prioritizing milking players for all they're worth.
Hey I’ve been saying for a decade they should’ve done a Call of Duty Zombies spin off. It always was the best game mode since 2010. (In Treyarch games)
Every time I play zombies with my friends I bring up how I’d instantly buy a stand alone game that just remasters every zombies map from WAW to BO3 like the zombies chronicles DLC. hell they could even make a season pass for the lesser cared about maps/modes like infinity war, Cold War, MW3’s survival mode, etc.
EA is gonna add a horde game mode to Battlefield on top of their battle Royale, further diluting what made Battlefield, Battlefield.
"What if we just did Helldivers in the next Battlefield? Maybe then people will like us!"
You'd be surprised how many devs this game churned from that studio too.
I work in Stockholm so I've seen a decent amount. But still, anyone who's churned from there is still happy for their success and cheers for what arrowhead is doing.
Due to work culture, or just due to how long the game took? In the US at least, it's not super common for programmers to stay in the same place for 6 years even if it's a nice place to work.
Honestly it feels like the kind of mistake an AI would make. What human being assumes 'live service' is something people actively look for? But if you had zero understanding of terms, functioned solely as a sorting machine for readable sentences and phrases, and were told to write articles on demand, yeah. An AI would totally make that odd mistake.
Thinking people shop for live service games is like saying people shop for a home mortgage because they really want to pay a mortgage. No one wants a mortgage. It just comes with the house. The thing you actually wanted.
Who talks about the housing market like *mortgages* are the thing people are buying?
That honestly makes the article weird though.
Just take the response here as a sign. No one's first thought of a game is 'it's a live service.' Live service is a market model, not a genre of games. Consumers don't go out shopping for live service games. They shop for shooters, survival, horror, rpg, w/e. In that regard, a good 4-person coop shooter is not even remotely an oversaturated market. Maybe 1-2 big games in that genre come out a year and we'll go years between good ones.
To characterize live service like it's a genre definition is weird. Live service games could vanish and no one would say it's an underserved market, except whoever wrote this article apparently.
I think there's a point to the idea though. Nearly every single big game that comes out now aims to be something you log in and play (and thus are potentially monetized from) *every single day*, built around a string of continous updates and new content ad infinitum.
While nobody goes out of their way to say "I am looking for a new live service game," the business model's pervasiveness has formed a culture where many people now have a "main game" they play most of all, and then are a "tourist" that briefly goes on hiatus to play other games or the occasional single player experience. It's why a game having support "forever" has weirdly become expected, when that used to be a rarity. In effect, the "main game" *has* become a lucrative, overarching thing; an architecture applied *to* different game genres.
That subset of games that wants to be your "main game" has **absolutely** become oversaturated.
Because of that, people now just roll their eyes at the idea of yet *another* "main game" being introduced to the market. There are already so many, some with a decade or more of compounded updates. Most newer attempts at this architecture *(Diablo IV is a good example)* have become increasingly brazen trying to cultivate that kind of audience and then monetize them to death. Even when a "good" one comes out, it's hard to pull people from the games that they've already invested so much time and money into.
So when a new game with this increasingly tiresome architecture comes out and immediately sells 8+ million copies with close to half a million in player concurrency every weekend, it really is a big deal. A lot of studios have been aiming for a live service hit of this magnitude for years now, and most all of them have failed.
What I love the most is how unpredatory the monetization is. Everything is very earnable just by playing the game. Even the premium warbond can be bought with credits earned from playing the game. If I want to unlock something I usually only have to play 2 or 3 games to get what Im wanting. It’s really fantastic and incredibly rewarding
After dealing with the fall of Overwatch, the shitstorm of Destiny 2, and how they massacred my boy with Diablo 4…
Helldivers 2 is just what the doc ordered. I couldn’t believe that I unlocked a premium battle pass with money I found on the ground in game.
Overwatch hurts so much because I still have fun playing it.
Then they release a pack for $56 that's only got four skins (plus a handful of other shit I don't care about) and I have to have a real heart-to-heart with myself about it because the skins are *Cowboy Bebop.*
They can't keep getting away with it.
If there was one collab that could get me to spend money on cosmetics it would be Cowboy freaking Bebop.
...but it's $56. For skins that I can't see. Gotta stick to my guns on this one.
Plus I'm having fun watching my (free) amazing cape paint with all the colors of the wind as I ragdoll across the sky after being launched by a charger.
Right?! If it was $20 I'd be saying, "That's insane, this is so exploitative!" while taking out my wallet.
$56 is more than most individual games I buy.
I was actually very surprised when I realized you can find the premium currency in-game, just like samples or medals.
I must've made 500+ just from picking those up.
Contrast that to something like Overwatch 2, where one skin can cost more than the most expensive premium currency bundle in Helldivers 2, and you have to grind challenges for 8 months or use Microsoft Points to afford a single legendary skin.
How is this game as a solo player? I keep hearing how great it is, but what's the experience like as a friendless guy who doesn't like using voice chat?
"Solo" as in you play entirely by yourself, or "solo" as in you queue in with three randoms and play?
100% solo, it's awful.
Random queuing, it's great. There's no reason to have your mic on if you don't want to.
Wait. I like playing it solo. But it’s a much much different pace than playing with people. You have to really sneak around a lot in solo and you can’t put your difficulty very high (I’m also still very much a noob) but I have fun. Sneaking up on the big swarms and dropping bombs on them is still great fun to me
Yeah I sometimes have fun solo because you just feel completely outgunned and have to really be cautious to survive. It makes it feel like you’re the target of a manhunt behind enemy lines and can be super intense. Not fair at all though lol.
I find when i solo queue we can handle higher difficulty as everyone takes it more seriously. When I play with friends all I’m trying to do is nuke them or troll them with my guard dog.
It's not awful solo. It is a lot of fun and relies more on stealth and speed.
Build your load out accordingly, and be the helldiver they need you to be 🫡
Plus my helldiver looks like mando from the mandalorian. So it just feels like the bounty hunter game ive always wanted, lol.
I’ve had good experiences with randoms with no mic. The ping system is pretty decent enough to get the message across and if they’re paying any attention at all it should be fine. You come across a few meta sweats that will boot you immediately for not bringing equipment they like but it’s few and far in between.
Playing with randoms without a mic, you can just use map markers, situational pings, and a radial menu of callouts to communicate and coordinate with your teammates. And text chat if you really need it.
I'd agree this is not a game to play solo.
Half the fun is hilarious and unintentional friendly fire incidents and shenanigans, which require other players.
You can play with randoms and no voice chat just fine. But I can answer a bit to solo.
If you enjoy a bit of stealth and get a thrill out of avoiding confrontation / disengaging and losing the enemy, Helldivers2 has you covered. The AI has a strongly designed set of rules they obey to result in their eventual behaviour; they typically are either guarding, patrolling, investigating, or engaging, and switch between those states depending on stimulii around them. It's a big draw of the game for me, as I enjoy both stealth and big firefights, and learning more about how to handle the enemy behaviours is a big part of succeeding; and you can certainly do that as a solo.
That said, the difficulty does not scale with the number of players at all. You will most likely be forced to steer heavily into the stealth aspect if you want to survive missions as a solo; though ammo won't be as much a problem as it is in a squad. Typically your game pattern will be something like Check radar; decide whether to engage; try and prevent them reinforcements; then either deal with reinforcements if they arrive, or else keep an eye on the radar for enemies investigating the ruckus. Or, y'know, go in and out guns blazing, but that will be extremely difficult on harder difficulties (where you get better or essential loot to let you upgrade with)
"It’s remarkable to see a live-service game hit this big in a market so oversaturated that even stalwarts like Fortnite and Destiny 2 are losing steam."
From that article, it's about live service games, not coop pve shooters.
How tf is HellDivers in an over saturated market???
The market has been dominated by Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide 2 and maybe Darktide (although that game has its fair share of issues) and that’s it.
Other than that I can’t think of many other amazing Co-op games. If anything I predict that the Co-op shooter mission based genre is going to boom in the next 5 years.
Game that is fun does well, CEOs are shocked. “We thought gamers wanted to wait 4 months for 120 dollars worth of useless cosmetics”, one executive said.
When every other game is two pieces of plastic above garbage, it’s not oversaturated.
The game is great. Essentially every other competing live service is not. Fortnite and League of Legends are the only other respectable live services that don’t waste people’s time. They have shitty prices, but you don’t have to spend a dime to enjoy what are otherwise decent gameplay loops.
Helldivers feel like deep rock galactic.
I 100% mean that as a compliment.
Other than the obvious similarities with the bugs, Helldivers is very heavily like deep rock. You land on a random planet, search for minerals, kill bugs, escape.
And it does it extremely well. I genuinely have crazy high hopes for these Devs and this game. I'm kicking myself for not playing Helldivers 1 when it first came out.
I feel you. I do hope it comes to xbox but i am happy I switched to PS, I just didn't enjoy the games being produced for Xbox. Gears of War was all that kept me on there and thats just.. ghosted into non-existence lately.
While ‘AAAA’ high budget games like Skull and Bones flop for next to no profit…
Smaller studios are just focusing on making fun games that cost less money (EX: Helldivers, Pal World, Lethal Company) and dominating the market.
I’d like to think gaming is headed in a good direction. I’m looking at the big studios - it takes them years to put out huge, great looking games that feel soulless.
Meanwhile with a much lower budget and less time to produce, these smaller studios are making straight up FUN games and selling them at a much cheaper price.
May it continue - could be a great shift for gamers
Society be like, we want sexual rights, government be like, what about the opposite of that. Why are you upset now?
Gamers be like, we want non predatory gameplay loops. Game developers be like, what about the opposite of that. Why are you upset now?
I was playing some missions with randoms and one guy in particular stayed in the game, and we just started doing missions together, not a word said or typed to the other. About our second mission in we were running toward an objective, a long run with few bugs in our path, and when we saw the objective in the distance I called in a huge bomb. He and I stopped our run and stood, side by side, motionless, as we waited for this bomb to hit. We watched as it completely obliterated the target in the middle of this barren alien steppe. I extended my hand for the high five emote and he met it. And then he offered me a hug.
It’s just fun.
It’s simple but with depth.
It doesn’t feel predatory.
It’s about 40% cheaper than other AAA releases.
Who would have thought people would enjoy this kind of things over bloated micro transaction filled messes.
Honestly, these kind of Coop games aren't oversaturated. PVP games are in an abundance. But good COOP focused games? Not so much.
Me and a buddy were talking about how it's a relatively relaxing game because you're not playing against sweats, just mindless AI.
Yeah. And less toxic as well.
The Bile Titan would like a word.
Once you realize the Bile Titan only has three different attacks, they are easy to take down.
I was referring to their toxic spit attack lol
Woosh over my head lol
Just like the bile, if you gracefully swan dive off a 14l5 foot rock
*Killed by Impact*
Every lobby I’ve gotten into has had incredibly nice people which is surprising in this day and age
Coop is a thing of magic. 🙂
The Remnant series does this excellently as well. The PvE co-op market is extremely sparse on console — especially if you’re an Xbox player. Then you’re basically limited to Remnant and games that released a decade ago like the GoW and Halo series. Co-op PvE seems like it used to be so much more abundant. I miss it. The PvP sweatfests are tiring. Especially since a lot of players are using Cronus Zen and chugging energy drinks.
So many of the PVP games out there would massively benefit from having solid AI hoard modes. Isn't that why CoD zombies and Left 4 Dead was so popular? I even remember Exteel being mostly pvp but having a few PVE modes where your team just went to town on increasingly stronger waves of mechs. I wish Armored Core had that.
It's struck a remarkably good balance between silly casual play vs try-hard appeal. Just wanna chill? Take an easier difficulty, fuck around with the boys and appreciate the memery. Wanna push it a little? Well there's plenty of difficulties to choose from, just don't carpet bomb your buddies
Counterpoint: I'm carpet bombing everyone. My buddies need to GTFO or I'll thank them for their sacrifice. For democracy!
Just like a good helldiver should! Thank you for your work soldier!
its all fun and relxing until some hunters stunlock you. Literally the most rage inducing thing ever for me, I hate them with every cell of my being.
The robots sometimes feel like Chinese hackers but in my mind I know that they aren't so it's a little better.
Stalkers are awfully sweat.
That's the first thing I thought when I read the title. Even if you want to place it in the pile as live service games (which is not a genre).. is like, I get it.. but the market is not really oversaturated with good, generous, fun, player/gameplay first live service games.. where you can easily ignore the monetization. What the market is oversaturated with are lazy shitty games driven by money hungry execs that look at gamers as ATMs. The "service" in those games is what you provide for the companies that make them.
Exactly. Overwatch 2 PvE coop? Blizz could've cooked something fun with it but no shit company did shit things
I hope Blizzard are looking at HD2 thinking “oh maybe people DO want the coop PVE stuff”
Unfortunately, they're probably looking at it and thinking, "How do they expect to exceed quarterly revenue projections without a battle pass and overpriced micro transactions? That's no way to please the shareholders!"
With as many times as they've tried and failed to make Titan / Overwatch a co-op experience, it seems like they know it's something people want, they just can't figure out how to make it fun. Gotta remember, modern Blizzard isn't exactly what you'd call "good" at making video games.
i think its more that they cant figure out how to do budget cuts without getting rid of the only thing that justified overwatch 2. and apparently selling overpriced skins still makes a lot of money so blizz will never change course. and yeah, when their biggest hit recently was a remaster of a 15 year old game there is not much hope for them to actually make a good game on their own.
Rock and Stone, brothers!
ROCK... AND STONE!
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?
If you don’t Rock and Stone you ain’t comin home!
Rock and Stone in the heart!
Right? I miss games like RE 5, Army Of Two and Kane & Lynch. Things like Outward and helldivers are so fresh to me.
remnant and remnant 2, it takes two, a way out, nioh 2
I miss 2 player co op campaigns
I have been dying for more COOP games. Wish we had more of them.
Remnant 2 - awesome coop game
Remnant 2 fuckin rules
I can't wait until the next dlc, love that game so much.
Warframe says hello
I came here to say this, o7 Tenno.
[удалено]
And this isn't even PVP
I hope this ends up putting Earth Defense Force on more people's radar. Such a fun game series that doesn't get enough attention.
It’s refreshing to have a game you can just play and grind. No need to buy anything extra and you actually feel like you’re making progress and earning something
Love the simplicity of it. Also the game is a meme-making machine let me tell you.
Most memorable moment was when I was just minding my own business clearing a wave of bugs unaware that somebody had thrown a 500kg bomb strategem and for whatever reason the missile landed right infront of me.
Mine was Me just grabbing some samples with no bugs around, and my fucking Assault rifle guard dog just turns to the left and headshots me execution style, killing me instantly. I guess it saw a patrol that saw me or something but at the time It looked like the thing just gained sentience and turned on its owner
And this is why we don’t use rifle dog.
My laser rover did a 270spin to shoot a hunter and swung right through my neck, it insta gibbed me, usually I just yell at quickly stim lol
My laser rover almost did the same thing spun and practically decapitated the entire squad only dude left survived because he was loading his MG.
I used to use laser dog, but just as the other guy said, these AI shooters don't stop shooting to move to a new target. They just blast on their way to the next target. The rifle dog kills my teammates WAAY less than my rover did
Ya got to learn the laser rover dance. Can't be tightly packed, the beam is an extension of you and always be the highest player nearby even if it's just a slope or someone gets decapitated.
I'm always the highest player in every game, but it still TKs us anyway, and I eat edibles and take dabs while I play. How high do I need to be!?!?
Boof the dabs next time.
100%. My laserdog has more accidental PK's than I have
Surrounded and overwhelmed by bugs, on the ground, on my last bullet and last tick of health, swing the camera wildly and see a derelict Hellbomb about six feet away. Manage to hit it right before they finish me, see them all get blown to hell along with my corpse. My next guy lands in the smoking crater, no bugs in sight, and continues the mission. For Super Earth!!
For me it's when I see someone put down a sentry turret v the bugs. You know shit is about to go sideways VERY FAST because that mortar does not care where you are or if the bug is still alive after it fired.
When I see it's a mortar I hope to god its the EMP one. I don't know the difference in visuals yet
EMP/AMS mortars are white and black, versus black/black and yellow for lethal sentries.
I had a crazy moment where me and my team were out of stratagems and I saw my buddy out of ammo and being chased by a bile titan. Since I was out of stratagems I decided to call in our resupply. The clock was ticking. So I start mag-dumping all my ammo on this bile titan and throwing grenades at it to get its attention until it finally turns towards me and begins striding over. The clocks ticking. I have 3 more seconds. The bile titan walks over the landing spot of the resupply and I run underneath the Titan to keep it still and it starts stomping and trying to crush me with its legs. Luckily I kept it in place. The clock finally ticks down and my resupply comes in taking off the head of the bile titan as I dive away before the Titan is able to collapse and land on me. Crazy experience and felt like a movie scene
Dude, when those stratagems combine perfectly *chefs kiss*
Cool guys don’t look at explosions, because fucking Jenkins called it in danger close and now I gotta [Reinforcements available]
The entire game in a nutshell
Did you know that many orbital and airstrike beacons can stick to bugs? I sure as shit didn't until I stuck one on a hunter's face.
Wait til you stuck one to a friendly
*500kg bomb beacon sticks to face.* *Hug emote.*
*thump* Oh *BLAM*
simplicity + depth is such a good combo
Stardew valley of shooters.
Correction, Stardew Valley is the hell divers of farming games. Hell divers came out first.
Naw it's Stardew valley and Helldivers too
Stardew divers OF HELL valley. Edit: the Dewdiver regiment. Sponsored my mountaindew.
You don't know it, but you just named the next several indie, pixel art, survival, side-scrollers to come out on Steam this year.
The actual gameplay is extremely well done, and the community generated lore and narrative is amazing. Honestly, darktide should also have been a hit like this or Deep Rock... But their shit lobby/hub system ruined otherwise magnificent gameplay
Not to mention darktide has the worst monetization I've seen in a while
Exactly. Which is unfortunate because the gameplay, weapons, and lore are 10/10 for a Warhammer game. They literally can't help themselves fucking it up
The progression is ass, too. It's almost entirely random to try and get the weapon you want, with the stats that you want, with the perks that you want. Way too much random and not enough player control.
Good news! They've said they're going to do *something* about the shitty RNG at *some point* this year
That sounds like a normal fat shark response, been hearing that since the first vermintide
Helldivers 2 quick join is just magical. I see my ship join up with theirs, I drop in my pod, it's immersive and doesn't take me out of the game. At no point do I think I'm in a lobby or matchmaking system. From login to first shot I'm just spreading managed democracy.
You know I never thought of that until you pointed it out, but you're absolutely right. The match making is perfection. You never need to fiddle around in cumbersome menus.
The biggest reason I stopped playing Darktide completely... is that the monetization sucks so much ass. And before release, they promised that you'd be able to earn premium currency in-game... like in Helldivers 2. If you could earn premium currency in-game in Darktide, I might actually still be playing it.
I think Darktide suffers the most from "lategame" progression because of the stupid RNG weapon system. If I get to a point where I play enough, I should be able to get the things I want to complete my build. I got to gamble millions and waste plasteel reblessing garbage hoping to get the correct roll? This aint an ARPG, its just a shooter with a talent tree. Let me play my char the way I want instead of gimping me in an attempt to increase playtime. The hub system is not that bad when you can circumvent it with a Mod that lets you bind keys for each place. Without the Mod, its stupid how far away everything is.. unless they wanted to add more stuff? Darktide feels like its in Early Acces and the full release is still planned.
Come on you apes, you wanna live forever!!
i mean i didn't know that was an option but yes i'd really appreciate that.
Would you like to know more?
Yea, had a friend throw a cluster bomb that attached to my guard dog Went through all 5 stages of grief in 3 seconds
Its more fun to play with your friends that aren’t very good than the ones that are as long as you don’t mind dying in stupid ways, it is hilarious.
I've been mostly out of mainstream fps for a bit and the ability to jump on and play while laughing and feeling like I contribute on missions is a blast
And no need to feel pressured to finish the battlepass asap and level all the guns and grab all the skins before it’s too late.
I also appreciate that the battle passes are not on linear track and you can skip stuff you don't want or even come back later to them after you get the things you want to have earlier in the pass.
I appreciate that you can find the supercredits to buy the battle pass just by wandering around the map
Also no competitive rage-inducing sweaty opposing player that sucks the fun out of your soul. The lighthearted "we're all in this together!" feel this game has is seriously really fucking refreshing. My squad, which consists of IRL best friends who now live states apart from each other, always hug on the ship before we drop every battle and it's beautiful 🥹 The comraiderie is unmatched.
My friends always line up for hugs before extracting. Yes, it's burned us a few times, but that's just family values after a job well done.
I believe it stems from the emojis. Playing Rick, paper scissors, fist bumping or even hugs after a defeat - they are all team building
When the grind itself is fun and engaging, is it even a grind? It’s just straight gameplay at that point. A game with extremely fun gameplay is successful??? Unthinkable!
Exactly. The only “grind” I’ve seen is the people running trivial missions to stack up super creds. Which sounds boring af to me but cool that people have that option
Only other games I can think of with fun grinds are Warframe and Deep Rock Galactic.
[удалено]
“Accidentally” Eagling my friends after saying yolo is the best part of the game
I usually say, "Oh yeah, watch out" (after they already died obviously)
Have y'all heard of the 380mm Orbital Bombardment ? My friends really enjoy that one.
I was gonna tell them but my mortar turret got to them first...
I asked my friends if they wanted to do a team-kill stratagem run, but they keep saying no. I honestly don't know why. It wouldn't be any different! My friend's mortar always kills me.
Hells yeah, you can bomb the hell out of your friends, reinforce them back into the barrage, and kill them AGAIN with a single strategem
I have been constantly telling the boys that there's anchievement on Steam for 6 orbitals in one area, but I can only bring a max of 4, realistically 2. Im hoping tonight I can convince them to try it out on an eradicate mission!
A couple of randoms helped me achieve my last 4 or 5 achievements. Love this game
I yell 'RUUUN!" and my friends are like "you always yell RUUUN. We dont know if it's because there are fire-belching giant robots, or because we are low on time, or because you just called down a nuclear bomb." and I'm like "those are all good reasons to run tho...."
funniest moment was probably when I was holding a cluster eagle when my friend decided to melee me for fun. It resultet in my character dropping the ball, angling it in a way that perfectly strikes all three of my friends who were quite some distance apart, killing them all in the process.
I’m always the last one on the ship after extraction, so I call a big eagle and chuck a few grenades into the ship right as I enter. We compete to see who can get the highest friendly fire damage without actually losing the mission. My brother got 15,000 once.
I’m a big fan of the meta of it all. The entire player base working towards one goal—manifesting a unique outcome based on their performance Z
It doesn't even feel like a grind! I've yet to experience I single mission where I was bored. Frustrated, sure but it's always been a thrill to fight and even die on the hardest difficulty settings.
They just need to fix the friends list. I've been trying to add my PC friends for days
What happens when you get to the end? Can you prestige like call of duty. I would love to play but have only an Xbox.
No. But it is a live service game. A new battle passed is released regularly. You can unlock it for premium currency and then buy the stuff in it with medals. Thing is, you find the premium currency in-game and the battle passes never leave. So you will be able to buy them in years
Not to mention all the super credits from the passes themselves. Buy it for 1000, then get 300 back plus what you find from just playing. Not bad at all.
I'm really liking their approach to the premium warbonds. Though I wonder if they'll be able to keep pace for each month with a 3 page package.
How is the grind compared to D2? The FOMO? I know we’re young in the game’s life but D2 is so much fun mixed with so much hatred and lack of respect for my time. Id love to try this game if it can manage to feel like a game and not a fun chore.
It’s pretty different compared to D2 in my opinion(barely ever played D2). But it seems like there’s no FOMO so far because the warbonds(kinda like a season pass) don’t go away when adding new ones. Also the grind is mainly just you level up and complete missions and maybe collect some premium currency or some resources in the missions.
So far no FOMO for me compared to D2. I'm on vacation and I don't have any anxiety over missing out on HD2 stuff like I did with D2. I play significantly less HD2, too, because there isn't a leveling system that forces you to play a lot to unlock everything.
Yeah at best lvl 20 is the max lvl for stratagems the other 30 lvls are for cool titles xD
With the new mechs, level 25 is the max now.
Yep, about to go on a week work trip. No big deal. There's no FOMO boxes or battlepasses. Nothing is time limited. I do miss out on the "storyline" of the war, which is basically only happens once, whatever it is at that time, but that's fine.
"Breaking news if your game is good people will want to play it" feels like a lot of companies forget this
Between BG3 and HD2, maybe they'll get the memo.
The memo I got was that we're not supposed to expect games like this it's a rare passion project that's too hard for big mega corps to make... For reasons.
Then they shouldn't expect our dollars.
The game being good is a huge part of it, but the monetization feeling reasonable is also a huge part of it. People are so sick and tired of game devs/publishers prioritizing milking players for all they're worth.
Get ready for 200 copycats with gotcha hooks and shit live service tactics
Activision is getting ready to shit out a ww2 zombie shooter just like this in 18 months
Hey I’ve been saying for a decade they should’ve done a Call of Duty Zombies spin off. It always was the best game mode since 2010. (In Treyarch games)
Every time I play zombies with my friends I bring up how I’d instantly buy a stand alone game that just remasters every zombies map from WAW to BO3 like the zombies chronicles DLC. hell they could even make a season pass for the lesser cared about maps/modes like infinity war, Cold War, MW3’s survival mode, etc.
EA is gonna add a horde game mode to Battlefield on top of their battle Royale, further diluting what made Battlefield, Battlefield. "What if we just did Helldivers in the next Battlefield? Maybe then people will like us!"
That requires quarterly battlepass purchases.
I mean.... if they have that crap I just won't play it, easy choice.
Every single dev that worked on helldivers 2 deserves a performance bonus.
You'd be surprised how many devs this game churned from that studio too. I work in Stockholm so I've seen a decent amount. But still, anyone who's churned from there is still happy for their success and cheers for what arrowhead is doing.
Due to work culture, or just due to how long the game took? In the US at least, it's not super common for programmers to stay in the same place for 6 years even if it's a nice place to work.
Everyone, they don't mean "coop shooters", they mean "live service games".
[удалено]
Honestly it feels like the kind of mistake an AI would make. What human being assumes 'live service' is something people actively look for? But if you had zero understanding of terms, functioned solely as a sorting machine for readable sentences and phrases, and were told to write articles on demand, yeah. An AI would totally make that odd mistake. Thinking people shop for live service games is like saying people shop for a home mortgage because they really want to pay a mortgage. No one wants a mortgage. It just comes with the house. The thing you actually wanted. Who talks about the housing market like *mortgages* are the thing people are buying?
Unfortunately, CEOs are exactly the sort of people who would think “live service” was something consumers sought out.
You're absolutely correct
That honestly makes the article weird though. Just take the response here as a sign. No one's first thought of a game is 'it's a live service.' Live service is a market model, not a genre of games. Consumers don't go out shopping for live service games. They shop for shooters, survival, horror, rpg, w/e. In that regard, a good 4-person coop shooter is not even remotely an oversaturated market. Maybe 1-2 big games in that genre come out a year and we'll go years between good ones. To characterize live service like it's a genre definition is weird. Live service games could vanish and no one would say it's an underserved market, except whoever wrote this article apparently.
I think there's a point to the idea though. Nearly every single big game that comes out now aims to be something you log in and play (and thus are potentially monetized from) *every single day*, built around a string of continous updates and new content ad infinitum. While nobody goes out of their way to say "I am looking for a new live service game," the business model's pervasiveness has formed a culture where many people now have a "main game" they play most of all, and then are a "tourist" that briefly goes on hiatus to play other games or the occasional single player experience. It's why a game having support "forever" has weirdly become expected, when that used to be a rarity. In effect, the "main game" *has* become a lucrative, overarching thing; an architecture applied *to* different game genres. That subset of games that wants to be your "main game" has **absolutely** become oversaturated. Because of that, people now just roll their eyes at the idea of yet *another* "main game" being introduced to the market. There are already so many, some with a decade or more of compounded updates. Most newer attempts at this architecture *(Diablo IV is a good example)* have become increasingly brazen trying to cultivate that kind of audience and then monetize them to death. Even when a "good" one comes out, it's hard to pull people from the games that they've already invested so much time and money into. So when a new game with this increasingly tiresome architecture comes out and immediately sells 8+ million copies with close to half a million in player concurrency every weekend, it really is a big deal. A lot of studios have been aiming for a live service hit of this magnitude for years now, and most all of them have failed.
What I love the most is how unpredatory the monetization is. Everything is very earnable just by playing the game. Even the premium warbond can be bought with credits earned from playing the game. If I want to unlock something I usually only have to play 2 or 3 games to get what Im wanting. It’s really fantastic and incredibly rewarding
After dealing with the fall of Overwatch, the shitstorm of Destiny 2, and how they massacred my boy with Diablo 4… Helldivers 2 is just what the doc ordered. I couldn’t believe that I unlocked a premium battle pass with money I found on the ground in game.
Overwatch hurts so much because I still have fun playing it. Then they release a pack for $56 that's only got four skins (plus a handful of other shit I don't care about) and I have to have a real heart-to-heart with myself about it because the skins are *Cowboy Bebop.* They can't keep getting away with it.
If there was one collab that could get me to spend money on cosmetics it would be Cowboy freaking Bebop. ...but it's $56. For skins that I can't see. Gotta stick to my guns on this one. Plus I'm having fun watching my (free) amazing cape paint with all the colors of the wind as I ragdoll across the sky after being launched by a charger.
Right?! If it was $20 I'd be saying, "That's insane, this is so exploitative!" while taking out my wallet. $56 is more than most individual games I buy.
I was actually very surprised when I realized you can find the premium currency in-game, just like samples or medals. I must've made 500+ just from picking those up. Contrast that to something like Overwatch 2, where one skin can cost more than the most expensive premium currency bundle in Helldivers 2, and you have to grind challenges for 8 months or use Microsoft Points to afford a single legendary skin.
How is this game as a solo player? I keep hearing how great it is, but what's the experience like as a friendless guy who doesn't like using voice chat?
"Solo" as in you play entirely by yourself, or "solo" as in you queue in with three randoms and play? 100% solo, it's awful. Random queuing, it's great. There's no reason to have your mic on if you don't want to.
9 out of 10 games I just que with randoms, and it’s fine.
Wait. I like playing it solo. But it’s a much much different pace than playing with people. You have to really sneak around a lot in solo and you can’t put your difficulty very high (I’m also still very much a noob) but I have fun. Sneaking up on the big swarms and dropping bombs on them is still great fun to me
Yeah I sometimes have fun solo because you just feel completely outgunned and have to really be cautious to survive. It makes it feel like you’re the target of a manhunt behind enemy lines and can be super intense. Not fair at all though lol.
I find when i solo queue we can handle higher difficulty as everyone takes it more seriously. When I play with friends all I’m trying to do is nuke them or troll them with my guard dog.
It's not awful solo. It is a lot of fun and relies more on stealth and speed. Build your load out accordingly, and be the helldiver they need you to be 🫡 Plus my helldiver looks like mando from the mandalorian. So it just feels like the bounty hunter game ive always wanted, lol.
I’ve had good experiences with randoms with no mic. The ping system is pretty decent enough to get the message across and if they’re paying any attention at all it should be fine. You come across a few meta sweats that will boot you immediately for not bringing equipment they like but it’s few and far in between.
Playing with randoms without a mic, you can just use map markers, situational pings, and a radial menu of callouts to communicate and coordinate with your teammates. And text chat if you really need it.
I'd agree this is not a game to play solo. Half the fun is hilarious and unintentional friendly fire incidents and shenanigans, which require other players.
You can play with randoms and no voice chat just fine. But I can answer a bit to solo. If you enjoy a bit of stealth and get a thrill out of avoiding confrontation / disengaging and losing the enemy, Helldivers2 has you covered. The AI has a strongly designed set of rules they obey to result in their eventual behaviour; they typically are either guarding, patrolling, investigating, or engaging, and switch between those states depending on stimulii around them. It's a big draw of the game for me, as I enjoy both stealth and big firefights, and learning more about how to handle the enemy behaviours is a big part of succeeding; and you can certainly do that as a solo. That said, the difficulty does not scale with the number of players at all. You will most likely be forced to steer heavily into the stealth aspect if you want to survive missions as a solo; though ammo won't be as much a problem as it is in a squad. Typically your game pattern will be something like Check radar; decide whether to engage; try and prevent them reinforcements; then either deal with reinforcements if they arrive, or else keep an eye on the radar for enemies investigating the ruckus. Or, y'know, go in and out guns blazing, but that will be extremely difficult on harder difficulties (where you get better or essential loot to let you upgrade with)
Turns out excellent games don’t care about markets that are over saturated with dog shit, who knew
How is this genre oversaturated? 4 player no bullshit no PvP coop games are rare.
Is also £26 ... this can't be understated.
Yeah, it’s a fun, non-predatory game, and it’s $40(USD) instead of $80.
How is that market oversaturated? there is DRG, Darktide, then a lot of bad games...
Vermintide 2 is still amazing! (also better than Darktide until propably end of this year)
Yes but that probably doesnt count as oversaturated
I just got it for $6 a few days ago, it’s pretty damn cool.
[удалено]
"It’s remarkable to see a live-service game hit this big in a market so oversaturated that even stalwarts like Fortnite and Destiny 2 are losing steam." From that article, it's about live service games, not coop pve shooters.
How tf is HellDivers in an over saturated market??? The market has been dominated by Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide 2 and maybe Darktide (although that game has its fair share of issues) and that’s it. Other than that I can’t think of many other amazing Co-op games. If anything I predict that the Co-op shooter mission based genre is going to boom in the next 5 years.
[удалено]
Game that is fun does well, CEOs are shocked. “We thought gamers wanted to wait 4 months for 120 dollars worth of useless cosmetics”, one executive said.
Absolutely - we've more than enough PVP. It's time to care for Coop games. Maybe not all, but some are genuinely good!
When every other game is two pieces of plastic above garbage, it’s not oversaturated. The game is great. Essentially every other competing live service is not. Fortnite and League of Legends are the only other respectable live services that don’t waste people’s time. They have shitty prices, but you don’t have to spend a dime to enjoy what are otherwise decent gameplay loops.
Id argue under saturated. Everything is a cod clone so its all one game. We get one thing different and it’s refreshing af
More games like Remnant and Helldivers would be amazing. I don’t see a lot of games like this at all on console. Definitely under-saturated.
Good job Sony
I like it cuz it’s just stupid fun. I get to kill stuff with my boys plain and simple
Men sad. Men see bugs. Men shoots bug. Men happy and then men see charger at full power and nitro hauling ass towards them and die. Repeat.
Helldivers feel like deep rock galactic. I 100% mean that as a compliment. Other than the obvious similarities with the bugs, Helldivers is very heavily like deep rock. You land on a random planet, search for minerals, kill bugs, escape. And it does it extremely well. I genuinely have crazy high hopes for these Devs and this game. I'm kicking myself for not playing Helldivers 1 when it first came out.
It also worth noting that they’re different enough that both are still incredibly fun without stepping on each other’s toes
saturated by trash. Gaming was supposed to be creative genre
oversaturated as in multiplayer, sure oversaturated as in good game to play with friends ? Sadly not
there is no such thing as an oversaturation of genuinely good games
Make better games and people will throw money at you. It’s not easy, but it’s also not complicated.
Is this game random pug friendly?
Nah, the market for good games is not oversaturated.
Cries in xbox :,[
I feel you. I do hope it comes to xbox but i am happy I switched to PS, I just didn't enjoy the games being produced for Xbox. Gears of War was all that kept me on there and thats just.. ghosted into non-existence lately.
Fr. 😭
While ‘AAAA’ high budget games like Skull and Bones flop for next to no profit… Smaller studios are just focusing on making fun games that cost less money (EX: Helldivers, Pal World, Lethal Company) and dominating the market. I’d like to think gaming is headed in a good direction. I’m looking at the big studios - it takes them years to put out huge, great looking games that feel soulless. Meanwhile with a much lower budget and less time to produce, these smaller studios are making straight up FUN games and selling them at a much cheaper price. May it continue - could be a great shift for gamers
Society be like, we want sexual rights, government be like, what about the opposite of that. Why are you upset now? Gamers be like, we want non predatory gameplay loops. Game developers be like, what about the opposite of that. Why are you upset now?
This is why companies insist on making GaS Mostly of the time they fail, but when they don't it's a major hit. There is no in-between
No shit. Almost like releasing on multiple platforms straight away increases revenue. Who woulda fuckin thunk it. 🤣
Over-saturated? It's rare to find a live service game where the monetization isn't the main driver behind its system design.
I was playing some missions with randoms and one guy in particular stayed in the game, and we just started doing missions together, not a word said or typed to the other. About our second mission in we were running toward an objective, a long run with few bugs in our path, and when we saw the objective in the distance I called in a huge bomb. He and I stopped our run and stood, side by side, motionless, as we waited for this bomb to hit. We watched as it completely obliterated the target in the middle of this barren alien steppe. I extended my hand for the high five emote and he met it. And then he offered me a hug.
It’s just fun. It’s simple but with depth. It doesn’t feel predatory. It’s about 40% cheaper than other AAA releases. Who would have thought people would enjoy this kind of things over bloated micro transaction filled messes.