Helldivers 2 CEO says "balance adjustments" have "missed the mark"

Topher

Topher

Identifies as young


The game still has a solid number of players, but still far off where the game once stood.

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Steam reviews of the last 30 days have been "Mostly Negative" with a lot of complaints about bugs, stability and nerfing a number of gameplay mechanics.

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HogIsland said:
It's ok, Helldivers 2 still has a long life ahead of it. It is a massive hit and GOTY contender.
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Yeah, the core gameplay is just too good, people are gonna return en masse when they are gonna balance the game properly and unveil the third enemy faction.
 
Heard most of the balance they've done is nerfing stuff. Imo that's a lame way to go around it, fun should always come before balance.
 
There have definitely been alot of issues since the last update, basically half the games I've played end with either a crash or some bullshit where you can't interact with the main objective. Very frustrating.
 
I will say that I love their buff on the laser weapons. before, I had avoided all of the laser weapons like the Scythe and the Laser Cannon. but since they balanced them, I've actually been using them pretty often now. and to be honest, I had never really use the flamethrowers all that much, and had been going with the Blizter or the Arc Thrower most of the time when I'm on bug missions instead. and maybe switch to Commando or EAT sometimes depends on what I'm doing.
 
The game was so fun I hope they can work it out, those patches in a PvE game were so unbelievably annoying felt like they saw everyone having fun and thought "nah"
 
Nerfing Weapons in a non PVP game is a fucking joke.

this game went from addicting to me playing once a week when bored.

i knew it was over for the game when they give you a new ship module for 25% more fire damage and then go and nerf flame throwers...
 
Haven't played it since maybe a month after release. Way too many crashes for my liking and watching them try to finely balance a PvE game kind of felt like they were telling me off for having fun the way I wanted to. Can't see myself going back to it unless something drastic happens.

That being said, fighting the automatons and blowing up their bases was fucking great fun on release. That was definitely a gaming highlight for me this year.
 
I think too.many.balancing patches is also part of the problem. Every time you find something you like, that is effective, the next patch would change something and you'd have to start shopping again.
 
Words. I am so sick of words when it comes to this developer. Stop balancing your 4 player co-op game as if it were a competitive PVP game. It's just as simple as that.

Stop with the "missed the mark" and "we'll do better" and just give people back the game that they came to enjoy in the first place. And from there, IMPROVE ALL the weapons that aren't as good as the meta weapons, and then create additional optional challenges for the people who want more difficulty. I don't know why this is a hard thing to understand.
 
Yeah, my group fell off when the nerfs kept tuning the game towards an absolute sweat-fest. We'd find a new strategy and then it was nerfed into the ground. And then we'd find a new strategy and then it was nerfed into the ground. In a PvE game, that's just not fun.
 
To beat a dead horse, I absolutely love the game but stopped playing after a while because it seemed like every update just made the game a little less fun. Many of the guns feel completely useless, like you're wasting your time if you even try to fight the enemy with your primary weapon.

Half the time it feels like they don't test anything before pushing these updates. Then it takes them weeks to fix what they broke. They've eaten through a lot of the goodwill they had on release and now people are less forgiving. They gotta hit the mark when the third faction arrives and presumably comes along with a big update.
 
Why do devs feel the need to fuck with what isn't broken. Same shit happened to Overwatch. Just revert the game back to where it was at launch. Admit you've done everything wrong and give people the game they bought and loved. They found something special and then decided to ruin it.
 
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diffusionx said:
Why do devs feel the need to fuck with what isn't broken. Same shit happened to Overwatch. Just revert the game back to where it was at launch. Admit you've done everything wrong and give people the game they bought and loved. They found something special and then decided to ruin it.
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Happens all the fucking time. They wrecked Division 2 in the same way by tinkering with weapons and gear pieces, sucking out all the fun of the game then next minute try to sell you a cosmetic item (singular) for $30. And there actually quite a few morons out there who would go and purchase it. Yes a cosmetic skin for damn near the price of DLC content for most games.

This is today's game industry in a nutshell I feel and it makes me sick and turns me off the hobby.
 
I get where they come from design wise, they want to copy Left 4 Dead's "Director" by adjusting difficulty dynamically in the game for some dramatic peaks and troughs in the action. This *is* a good game design, problem it comes across so aggressive it really does hurt the fun factor. So if you do really well, the game compensates by having a couple of Chargers and Titans pop out of the ground at a time while you're already having a running battle with a horde. It wants to kill the players because the internal algorithm demands a blood sacrifice to raise the stakes and excitement. *they killed all the chargers? Spawn some more!*

That's the theory, but players don't understand this underlying mechanic and become frustrated. Combine this with the aforementioned weapon balancing. They are designed for counter-play but again that's something most players again don't understand or care about. They bring light armor and a shield like all the cool YTbers do.
That's why it gets ridiculous at higher difficulty settings, because eventually you don't have the DPS to take them down and it becomes a horrible slog, it's hard to reach or find your heavy stratagem weapon in the confusion after you die and it's another 5 minutes until you can drop a new one.

One suggestion from my part is to introduce chip damage so every weapon can hurt everything, even if it's by a small amount. No more reflects or complete immunity bullshit.
 
The past few months have literally been the community finding really fun ways to blow shit up just to have it nerfed into the ground one patch later.
In a pve game without any kind of long term goals that is pretty much the most stupid thing you can do as a developer.
 
TintoConCasera said:
Heard most of the balance they've done is nerfing stuff. Imo that's a lame way to go around it, fun should always come before balance.
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Seriously. Diablo 3 was better after Blizzard took the "no nerf, only buff" approach. D4 nerfing fun, high damage builds so people didn't go through the game faster felt like the most corporate shit I've seen MGS 5 taking half your credits unless you connected to the multiplayer.
 
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IT aint fun anymore,especially in higher difficulties.
I like a game where the more i spend time playing it the stronger i get.
I rather just play Earth Defence Force than this,at least that game is more fun.
 
I dipped once they nerfed the rail gun. There should never be nerfs in a PVE game, EVER. I got backlash for saying that when the nerf hit but apparently they kept fucking with shit even after that and possed off more people. Oh well.
 
The game might be way from the highs, but at 18k CCU and a daily high of 25k after half a year that's still solid.

Although coming from a 400k+ all time high, it has dropped a lot. Pretty much every game ahead of it (H2 is ranked about 50th in CCU right now), started off with way less all time peak CCU.
Kings Field said:
I dipped once they nerfed the rail gun. There should never be nerfs in a PVE game, EVER. I got backlash for saying that when the nerf hit but apparently they kept fucking with shit even after that and possed off more people. Oh well.
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I hate when devs nerf shit. It's happens in COD every year a million times. I can understand crazy shit like dual 1887 shotguns in MW2 2009 where that insane combo could one shot people from giant distances, but I find most tweaks pointless and just catering to sour fans hoping their complaining leads to the dev boosting their fav weapon while gimping other people's weapons.

For those of you who never played that old COD game, there was a pistol looking shotgun. And the game allowed akimbo dual wielding for the first time in a COD game. But if double armed with these guns something haywire happened and blasting people with them you could practically kill people at short/med SMG range with one shot whereas shotguns are supposed to have really short range for balancing issues. I think they patched it after a month.
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
The game might be way from the highs, but at 18k CCU and a daily high of 25k after half a year that's still solid.

Although coming from a 400k+ all time high, it has dropped a lot. Pretty much every game ahead of it (H2 is ranked about 50th in CCU right now), started off with way less all time peak CCU.

I hate when devs nerf shit. It's happens in COD every year a million times. I can understand crazy shit like dual 1887 shotguns in MW2 2009 where that insane combo could one shot people from giant distances, but I find most tweaks pointless and just catering to sour fans hoping their complaining leads to the dev boosting their fav weapon while gimping other people's weapons.

For those of you who never played that old COD game, there was a pistol looking shotgun. And the game allowed akimbo dual wielding for the first time in a COD game. But if double armed with these guns something haywire happened and blasting people with them you could practically kill people at short/med SMG range with one shot whereas shotguns are supposed to have really short range for balancing issues. I think they patched it after a month.
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Man MW2 was peak brilliance the first couple months of launch. There was so much broken shit it made the game what it was. Tac knife, akimbo 1887's, SCAR, ACR, etc. so much viable op stuff.
 
I hate when devs constantly tinker with balance.

Get it right the first time and stick to it. Tweaking shit all the time just turns me off from the game entirely
 
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Kings Field said:
Man MW2 was peak brilliance the first couple months of launch. There was so much broken shit it made the game what it was. Tac knife, akimbo 1887's, SCAR, ACR, etc. so much viable op stuff.
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Tac knife in terms of commando knifing from 10 ft away? lol. Hated it. Those sprinting knifers were a pain, but I didn't mind. It still takes some skill to run around solely knifing people.

I dont remember what issues SCAR gun had. Never really used it. But it had good iron sites.

I was an ACR whore with stopping power. Godly gun. I dont think they gimped it??? But if they did I never noticed. Only gun I used when it unlocked, comboed with an auto-shotgun as secondary. Add in Scavenger to replenish shit, and I was planting claymores over and over again. lol. 5-7-9 killstreak pred missile, heli, harrier. Or 5-8-13 (I think) which was pred, harrier, AC130.
 
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This game is just taking a bit longer to reach the eventual hell divers 1 population AKA basically dead.

They couldn't harness the attention they got to retain it.
 
I've been playing EDF6 during the last couple of weeks... guess how many balance patches released while I palyed it...

zero... because it's fucking whack to release balance patches for PvE games that are supposed to be a bunch of friends shooting ailen bugs and robots with increasingly crazy weapons and vehicles. especially ones that nerf guns.

reject modernity! EMBRACE TRADITION! JOIN THE EDF!

EDF! EDF! EDF!

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That's a weird way to say "we hate our player base but didn't think they'd actually stop playing". In the next chapter when player counts tumble even more they will talk about the harrowing ordeal they've navigated with credible death threats.
 
These guys have fucked around for months and refuse to fix the completely broken social menu and crossplay functionality that has been in shambles since April. They'll literally say and do anything except actually patch bugs - they'd rather play musical chairs with their weapons and release shitty cosmetics rather than actually make the game work. And they wonder why nobody wants to play a game they have systematically made worse with every single patch.
 
When will these devs learn that while gameplay balance is important, and nerfs have a legitimate place in the toolbox, for the love of Jeebus Crispie, do not nerf the fun.
 
My hot take :
Balance is fine and the community are just complaining for nothing.

I am still having fun using "unusable weapons".

If I was on the reddit, I wouldn't have known that the game is "in such bad shape"

Outside of crashes, I am fine with the game
 
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I played this game religiously for about a month or so. Amazing game.

Shame to hear it's gonna a bit sideways. I'm sure they can recover as the core gameplay is just too good. Ill be back.
 
Yep I played it pretty hard at release, got to level 35 or something and then when all the nerfs and bullshittery started I stopped and haven't been back for any length of time which is disappointing because the core game was fun and there is so much potential but they are just squandering it to be honest.
 
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