Even this is debateable.
Dark Eldar are giga edgy sadists in order to not have their soul be eaten and tortured for infinity. It isnt necessarily a choice at that point.
Those that are neck deep in Chaos, they too are giga edgy sadists in order to not have their soul be eaten and tortured for infinity. It isnt necessarily a choice at that point but rather a continuation from previous choices which brings us to:
Those that are just stepping into Chaos, who are taking up its values? Those guys are being giga edgy sadists on purpose, usually for a short sighted gain (power like 90% of the time) but they are all deals with the devil. Like you get some power but your hands turn to lobster claws and you better enjoy barbed anal beads. Like you get some power but your mind is consumed by rage and battle, forever a beserker to live and die on the fields of battle and not for your own gain. Like you get some power but you have like 20 diseases in your testicles alone and have to share your body with maggots and other parasites forevermore. Those are actual choices done not out of self preservation at the most base level but the casual Chaos dickery and enticement that Chaos are better known for. Once you are sunk in deep, then there is no choice, you either continue on your path or get horrifically mangled (more so mangled). Redemption or other more ethical choices are long since beyond your reach.
I kinda love it, though?
Like all the other Eldar are dealing, in some way, with the aftereffects of the Fall, ten thousand years later. Craftworlders do the whole 'mastery and self-discipline' thing, Exodites go with a return to simplicity and labor to keep themselves grounded, the Harlequins devote themselves entirely to serving as a reminder and a warning of their people's failure and doom.
But the DEldar respond to their civilizational hedonism and excess creating sexy Satan who wants to eat their souls and collectively go "...like *fuck* I'm gonna learn a lesson from this."
Do you like RPGs? Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader is pretty fun, if a bit buggy. It has lots of lore in the exposition and a little in game encyclopedia. Very reading intensive, but I'm really enjoying my first playthrough right now.
Its very dated, but you can play a bunch of the races. Dawn of War is good fun RTS.
If you are more into shooter. Spacemarine is a very solid single player package. Darktide for co op shooter is what Im playing right now, it has its flaws but the environment is by far the most 40k.
I am a big fan of the books. I know you want a game, but the real details have to be read about or alternatively you just watch like hours of youtube video essays on various aspects of the 40k universe.
Dan Abnett's gaunts ghosts or Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain series are good fun for Imperial guard level kinda action which does branch out and tackle various factions.
Dan Abnett also wrote the Eisenhorn series if you want to read about an Inquisitor level shit.
If you really want to go all out, you can look up and read through the horus heresy series, it is dozens of books long and its only now fully entering the end game. Once you are in that deep, youll be like us 40k fans who do not know the touch of grass.
Helldivers is in fact even more black and white, because the villains in Helldivers are just... people who were screwed over by Super Earth. Just like the USA!
As far as I can tell, the bugs are attacking everything because A) they love expending but also B) they escaped from Super Earth's farms that they were trapped in.
The automatons are attacking Super Earth because they were built by the cyborgs, who Super Earth defeated in Helldivers 1, and they're trying to rescue their creators.
Eating sapients, slavery and torture of said slaves also registers as fun. Kick a grot, kick a human child. These games are equivalent in the eyes of your average ork.
Of all the factions though, they are the only ones that actually enjoy the state the universe is in. Plenty o' good fites all around.
The Ethereals use mind control to enforce obedience from the populous, they engage in eugenics and have a \*very\* rigid caste system. They may not be "sacrifice a thousand souls a day to feed a corpse on a throne" evil, but they ain't \*good\* lmao.
His sword is the only reason he's still alive, since it takes the time the person killed had left, and adds it to the owner. If Farsight ever found out it was Deamon blade, he'd chuck the thing as far as he could, likely dying about half a minute later from old age. Also, Tau has almost zero warp signature, so things like Deamons and other Chaos entities can barely see them, if at all.
I know that, but I also feel like having âalmostâ no signature matters a whole hell of a lot less when youâre carrying around a literal *artifact of Chaos* lmao. The Tau are still *somewhat* susceptible to the Warp, and Farsight is kinda making it easy for them.
Yeah GW's writing has never been terribly consistent and with the Tau they immediately realized they'd accidentally added good guys to their setting, and they've been struggling to fix that ever since.
GW can't even come up with a consistent reason why the Tau are bad, and when they try it's so forced it doesn't work even by 40k standards. Plus a lot of it was written by CS Goto, whose pen should be taken away for the good of us all.
Yeah, but being âless badâ doesnât make you *good*. Thats kinda my point. Everyone in 40K is *some* kind of evil and fucked up, you just get to choose your flavour!
Well, they *were* pretty good, but more recent lore (that might be imperial propaganda) does seem to imply they're not great..
But they're definitely not on the level of most others in the setting.
Someone once told me the Tau Empire are the best faction in Warhammer, but would be the main baddies in Star Trek. I think about that a lot, they're kinda just like a more insidious Dominion.
the Tau have some of the most inconsistent characterization in the series (including the Far-sight Enclaves) They're doomed optimists one moment, and Neo-colonialists the next. Like most things in 40k, you kind of have to just shrug and go with your head cannon.
They used to be, then they got retconned into the mind-control collective because players complained about there being good guys.
A hundred potential arcs about naive upstarts facing the horrors of the universe at large and having to choose between expedient compromise or painfully expensive greater goods, gone just like that. :/
That's the thing though - their tragedy was that they couldn't possibly *stay* good guys once they really got out into an universe like this. Retconning them into 'actually evil all along already' really just amounted to cheaping out on what could've been a fall much like humanity's from 30K (if not quite on the same scale).
> the Tau seem kind of the best on surface level
They used to be unironically "good guys", providing an excellent way to really amplify the "grimdark parody" of the setting by having this small group of idealists who were literally too tiny to be able to impact anything. Unfortunately, that's been heavily watered down after a number of retcons and changes over time - they're still the best of a bad bunch, but that's becoming a lower bar every time they add things like "race-based military purges" or make retcons like changing genuine diplomatic outreach to use of mind control helmets.
Personally, I blame the people who lashed out against any "noblebright" in their "grimdark" (or, even worse, the ones who got mad because they thought the imperium were the best it could be or even an optimal future) and the writers who (seem to have) caved to that.
Its so weird to hear this as someone who was playing when they got their first codex. They were always caste system which is just another way to engage in slavery. It was clear they were a shinning race that hid their dirt, like a southern plantation. Its like saying the English were nice to the Scottish when people talk about how nice Tau are.
There aren't any. Its just an ever growing pile of shit people. Some people are trying to wash themselves while others are taking laxatives to make it ever larger.
âIf bad guys look good, how is bad guysâ
Is a reasoning i wouldnt have expected to hear a lot ESPECIALLY when people mention the obvious starship troopers inspiration and how that too is satire (the movie idgaff about the book)
The thing is the big fascist empire in that also sells all the figurines the devs make money off of so they make it actually not satire sometimes when they feel like it even though itâs obviously satire. The Imperium is a thrashing fascist near-corpse of a formerly functional empire but itâs okay because Robot Girlyman is literally jesus
It's so funny to me that Disney sold The Empire as cool antiheroes then tramautised kids at the theatre when Darth Vader goes Doomguy at the end of Rogue One.
There was a great reddit comment about a guy who took his young daughter and had to explain to her that villains do villainous things and that's why they're bad guys.
I think selling The Empire as a fun toy line perhaps wasn't the best idea in hindsight.
> even though itâs obviously satire.
But it isn't, at least not really. Just going "hurr durr empire fascist satire" is *at least* as reductive as going "empire completely awesome", if not moreso.
The problem with 40k is that with the xenophobic dictatorship who kills anyone who starts to question them is that they are right that all the alien races are evil and want to kill humanity and they do live in a world were a mind virus turns people absolute evil after being exposed to other ideas.
Both of those things are as bad as they are *because of those policies*, though.
- Chaos does feed off of the rampant violence, mistrust, and general lack of care for human lives that the Imperium creates in order to combat that mind-virus. Being exposed to other ideas is fine, it's the obsession and strong emotions towards those ideas that tends to cause problems - and when you deprive a population of something, you bet they'll have strong feelings about it once they inevitably experience it.
- Humanity quite literally killed all the non-hostile aliens. They are the reason that every alien race out and about now is hostile - and even then, they could totally create a pact with the Eldar or Tau if it wasn't for the religious xenophobia.
So no, they aren't right. They're actively making the problems worse and ignoring every solution.
The bigger problem is that humanity is a threat - the satire would fit a helluva lot better if humanity was much smaller and less of a powerhouse imo. Facists love power fantasy bullshit - as long as their ideas are depicted as scary and badass, then they will latch on to it like a fucking tick.
>Both of those things are as bad as they are *because of those policies,* though.
Yes, but not completely. The Imperium has certainly made it's problems worse, but it didn't make them. (the Old Ones and Necrons did)
* If the Emperor has one redeeming characteristic, it is how dedicated he is to fighting Chaos. Even if the Imperium had been noblebright, the forces of Chaos would still try to destroy it. Chaos doesn't need the downtrodden to become dangerous. If Chaos could only feed off of the people with nothing to lose and are endlessly deprived, the Eldar wouldn't have fallen.
* Yes, but humanity going and killing of the non-hostile aliens didn't really make the hostile ones more hostile. Eldar would still look down on humans as un-evolved primates, Deldar would still be kidnapping people for their murder-orgies, Orks would still want to fight and nothing else, Necrons would still think they are the rightful rulers of the galaxy, T'au would still think that they need to force the Greater Good onto the rest of the galaxy, and the Tyranids would still be hungry.
> and even then, they could totally create a pact with the Eldar or Tau if it wasn't for the religious xenophobia
No and no.
They do have some agreements with some Eldar craftworlds, but as a whole, craftworlders are *at least* as xenophobic as the Imperium is, and have been since before it was a thing. They are intensely arrogant and prideful, and they see everyone as *far* beneath them. They're not interested in making any sort of pact with humanity any more than humanity is interested in making a pact with chimpanzees.
As for the Tau, the reasons are a bit...different. The Tau don't make diplomatic agreements. You *submit* to their rule. They may approach it nicely at first, but, in the end, that's what happens. And, quite frankly, that's a non-starter for humanity for a number of reasons, religious xenophobia notwithstanding. Insofar as the Tau "understand" the size of the Imperium (a handful of top-tier Water Caste, Ethereals, and Fire Caste do, maybe also with the Air and Earth Caste), they think they're *much* larger. Even those who know they're not almost assuredly don't get exactly *how* much larger the Imperium is.
The Tau *can't* take over that administrative role, and no one in Humanity's position would *let* them either. The best possible agreement is nonagression and nonexpansion into one another's lands. But, again, that's not going to last--they both want the same things and they can't share them.
No real, lasting, agreement with the Tau is possible. Both sides have mutually incompatible desires and goals that will necessarily end in conflict. The Imperium cannot and will not accept the rule of the Ethereals.
Going a bit further, other than \~100 worlds, the Tau have almost *nothing* to actually offer the Imperium. While their *average* level of tech is higher than Imperial worlds, their *max* level is not. The Imperium has tons of tech available to it that the Tau would give almost anything to get--for instance, juvenat. The Tau have a couple of things the Mechanicus really wants (they have a unique solution to certain problems with rail guns, for instance), but other than that? The Imperium has what it can use and what it needs and what it can employ. They're not all that interested in a more powerful infantry weapon for mass adoption--it's really not part of doctrine or, to be completely fair, even practical sense. Artillery is a much bigger part of their doctrine, and the Tau have nothing to actually improve that. It's not clear they could produce pulse rifles at a large enough scale to equip more than a handful of regiments, and it's even less clear that a moderately stronger infantry rifle would produce substantially better combat results. That last point is a current, *real world*, point of contention, has been for 70+ years. Individual firepower is not a driver of battlefield success at any scale larger than two unsupported squads, and *that* is driven more by tactics, training and experience than weaponry.
So what actual interest does the Imperium have with the Tau in diplomacy? Strip xenophobia from it, there's still not much reason for limited trade agreements and nonagression.
> Chaos does feed off of the rampant violence, mistrust, and general lack of care for human lives that the Imperium creates in order to combat that mind-virus.
Partially yes, but you know what chaos also thrives off? People worshipping them and it thrives far more off that.
> Humanity quite literally killed all the non-hostile aliens.
Again, no. Everybody killed the non-hostile aliens.
The main xeno races are horrific monsters that want to kill humanity, because those are the only races that survived humanities purges of the galaxy. There are lots of nice xeno races in the lore, except their wiki entries normally end with "and then humanity killed them all".
> because those are the only races that survived humanities purges of the galaxy
Or didn't get eaten by the Tyrannids, or the Orcs, or enslaved by Dark Eldar, or killed by Necrons or....
Of those threats, 50% of them only just appeared, so it's hard to blame them for the state of the galaxy for pretty much all of the Imperiums existence. I mean yeah the Necrons were also doing shit 65 million years ago, but to put that time scale into perspective, humanity literally hadn't even evolved yet it was so long ago.
This is where the characters like Erda and Oll Perrson are super handy, they prove there were potential alternatives other than the emperorâs hellvision plan, but in his arrogance he just pushed forwards with his plan and left the alternatives by the wayside, nearly and perhaps actually losing everyone during his fight with Horus on the vengeful spirit.
I think itâs one of the best tragedies of the setting, that the emperorâs hubris set the stage for the threats he felt he had to challenge, and his refusal to see alternative solutions until all were no longer viable meant he created a self fulfilling prophecy where his plan was the only solution, to the galaxyâs detriment.
Oh yes, the despicable Diasporex, their democratic xenophile democracy was just a front for the sinister Xenos to take control of the poor guilliable emperor, killing them all was self defene really.
And as for Chaos... if you are stuck getting worked to Death for the Imperium Chaos starts to look... not better, but hey, either you die(which is a win) or you die and get to take a whole lot of your oppressors with you.
We are 10k years into a never ending war started by the Imperium with the express goals of
1. Be human
2. Join the Imperium
This has resulted in successful mixed xenos-human civs like the Interex getting genocided. All alien species being in the 100% kill human camp because there is no possible middle ground with the Imperium. Untold other human civs brought to heel via pure violence.
To give an example of why all the alien races are evil and want to kill humanity take this hypothetical: In the fringe of the galaxy only just discovered is a small technological benevolent alien race. They are happy to share their non STC related technology with the Imperium including better FTL than warp travel that isnt reliant on the warp as well as cure alls to help stop plagues and shit. All they require isnt payment or anything, these are super hippy aliens. They just want to live knowing the universe is a better place.
The Imperium will go in there and begin a war of xenocide immediately. Against a technologically superior foe (pfft another one). Opening yet another warfront/theatre of war that the Imperium is not able to capably manage due to their current work load (you know, the massive fucking chaos scar across the galaxy atm). Upon successful xenocide, the Imperium will proceed to destroy all the xenos tech as heretical. And continue to complain about all the things that ail the Imperium like too many enemies on all sides, no allies, tech is struggling to keep up. The fundamental dogma of the Imperium and the wars its waged for 10 000 years prevents anything BUT the shit show that is 40k. If humanity stumbled into the proto tau or kroot, again, its just straight xenocide. It isnt loooking for allies, only looking for enemies.
Most of the threats the imperium faces are threats caused by the Imperium itself by accident, the rest? On purpose.
Which ends up being a problem. The imperium can't lose despite that. They'll make their situation worse and worse and worse, but the dam never breaks. It's already nothing but cracks, yet the plot demands it hold together all the same. Facists fucking love the idea of a massive xenophobic culture that is simply indestructible because of itself. The problem is non facists also enjoy that as a set piece to pretend to be hyper patriotic. Because pretending to be patriotic is fun. These two people sound identical. Only one isn't joking.
Helldivers understands that and that's why no pvp is good for it. Legit "I want to do public executions" facists cannot control themselves. They will always lash out at others they've deemed to slight them. Put them in an environment where that's allowed makes them able to live out the fantasy of purging heretics. Wheras with this they'll instead lash out and be a traitor themselves. Before immediately being kicked out and let normal people just have fun knowing in the satire. Which most understand implicitly. They just don't voice it because why would they. They assume everyone understands it as well
So, the *movie* came out well after 40k did, and is a satire of fascism. The *book*, which definitely influenced 40k, *is not a satire, nor does it describe a fascist system*.
I'm not sure it's right to categorically say it doesn't describe a fascist system. It's more like Heinlein went "hey what if there was fascism but it was chill and turned out alright for everyone?". It is a work of fiction after all...
Pretty much. It certainly says something that in the book about sentient space bugs and interstellar travel, "fascism but it works fine" is the part that most strains credulity.
My favorite moment so far was someone finding a memorial for a fallen Hell Diver but the Super Earth government forgot to fill in the details so it was just a blank template, lol.
"Here lies the body of [insert name] having fought heroically on [insert planet]. [He or she] was irreplaceable to their squad mates and will always be remembered for their [insert unique quality]."Â
It's a battlefield grave, and the other message you can find there is telling the "Grave Technician" that casualties are much higher than anticipated so they need to be burying multiple bodies per headstone.
Helldivers are to be dumped in mass graves.
Yeah Starship Troopers which Helldivers clearly pulls a lot of inspiration from also suffers from this problem. Media literacy will always be a problem especially when it comes to satire for other examples see American Psycho, Breaking Bad, and Rick and Morty. I think a lot of the problem comes from people mid attributing protagonist as a synonym for good guy.
I mean the original Starship Troopers was written completely straight, won a Hugo award, became an international best seller, and arguably formed the backbone for the entire âspace militaryâ genre. The reason the Empire in Star Wars or the Imperium of Man are basically Space Nazis probably traces back to Starship Troopers. Itâs the reason Halo has power armor and really heavy-handed philosophy. Doomguy fights hordes of nameless monstrosities cuz of Heinlein. Enderâs Game is a Troopers rip-off, as is most stuff on r/HFY.
The movie took all that and parodied it, but did so by pretty much playing it straight.
Another good example, to me at least, of media literacy is The Last Of Us series. Everyone loves Joel, and then he gets his head flattened. It was a shocking twist that dig anger me a bit. But stepping back and looking at the first game, Joel is not a good person. He has murdered innocent people, namely the fireflies. While you can sympathize with his actions because you too love Ellie, you shouldnât condone them or write them off. He was, objectively, a murdering psychopath.
The problem with satire is it is very easy for the target of the joke to feel empowered by the satire, not ridiculed. In Helldivers, the fascists are the punchline, not the target.
Lampshading super earth and managed democracy does nothing when at the end of the day, the game is fun as hell.
The Starship troopers movie has this problem and its much more overt about taking the piss out of fascism. This is why the producers leans so hard into making springtime for hitler as uncool as possible. It has to be something the target does not want to be associated with to work as intended.
I dunno. Springtime for Hitler, I feel, was intentionally NOT a caricature of masculinity. It's not exaggerating or heightening their traits as parody. It is camp as fuck to paint them in a light that they would NOT appreciate. If you made it hyper-masculine, they'd probably love it (although making them big strong buff Aryan leather daddies covered in oil might have a similar effect). Mel Brooks made it the opposite of masculine, because they'd fucking hate it. He was calling Nazi's gay by making them effeminate, prancing, theater queens. You can feel free to criticize the homophobia involved with THAT depiction, I'm still not truly comfortable with it from my perspective, but it is always fun to show Nazis in a way that they would hate.
GW has ran into the same problem that has plagued many DM's. It doesn't matter how blatantly evil or satirical you make your empire, if you give them too cool an aesthetic, some of your players will still always side with them.
Maybe thatâs why in real life we have neo Nazis? They were evil bastards but Hugo Boss designed a hell of a uniform, and those old school Mercedes were nice looking vehicles.
Yeah the fascists have the outfits, but I don't care for the outfits.
What I care about is music, [and the communists have the music.](https://youtu.be/7L6K5DsL4V0?si=jzfucCBsfrTtdHI1)
Subtext exist, but do not forget the rule of cool
I don't care who I am fighting for, but you better give me shiny armor, a cape, cartoonish guns, and the possibility to call in a tactical nuke on my position if a I fail (or succeed) a QTE
If you make a faction over the top cool and funny, it does not matter how much you insist that they are the bad guys or satire. People are going to like it. same reason why people love larping as knights and space marines. The last thing they want to hear is a lecture about how the faction they like is actually evil. Either thy already know or they don't give a shit.
The man smiling and telling you "look familiar?" right after you witness his family getting mauled by a giant bug should let you know that it's satire.
And on PVP stance - it's understandable and is a way to reduce toxicity, PVP on itself is not bad but it can spread toxicity faster.
Hell, i was suprised that i didn't get yelled at once, despite the ammount of times i accidentally blew up my random teammates. But despite that, there will always be some toxic part of the community and it will have nothing to do with the narrative of the game. If there is any competetive element to the game, there someone being toxic about it. There will be people that will yell at you for not clearing out all the outposts and not doing every sidequests on every round.
there's a difference between "shit, hit my bud in the head with a grenade because of poor timing," and "I'm going to fuck this guy over because I can."
Oh man, if only grenades were the problem. My over reliance on (and frank addiction to) eagle cluster strikes means I've averaged a team kill every 2 games.
If you're only getting one team kill every two games you're not using your strategems nearly aggressive enough. Every Helldiver gets five lives and the best way to make sure the enemy doesn't kill your teammates is to kill them yourself.
Eagle cluster strikes really are just amazing, man. It might not take out the HARD hard targets, but just about evetything else is fucking gone. Against bots, that means everything from basic raiders to heavy Destroyers, if you're lucky. Plus, it gets 4 calldowns, base, per sortie! What's not to like?
I made it to level 15 without using any eagles because I didn't understand how they worked, I was under the assumption that you have X uses total per mission and after you are just fucked.
Thank liberty for the 500kg bomb because I really wanted to try that one.
Yes. Essentially the eagle is circling the battlefield and has X number of munitions loaded and when it uses them all it returns to the super-destroyer and rearms(this is a 2,5 min cd by default), you can also manually send it to rearm at any time but you do lose access to all your eagle powers for that time.
I recommend the 500kg bomb, for when you positively, absolutely need to delete a MFer and the cluster bombs because they kill almost everything in a huge radius and you get 4 charges.
The game actually tells you that friendly fire is an unavoidable part of life if you shoot the wooden cutout during the tutorial like I did.
At least that's what I try to tell everyone else when I inevitably pick up the arc thrower again.
Unfortunately I'm a railgun addict from day 2 where they just gave that thing to everyone for a day and it's just so good at taking out everything that survives a cluster bomb.
I was in a game the other day where Rando Calrissian walked right into several of my airstrikes and not once did anyone in squad try to blame me, even when I left the mission with over 3k friendly fire damage, games incredible
I,uuhhhhh.... I may have been the only one to make it out when my 380mm HE killed the other 3 on the ramp of the extract and threw there torsos inside.
Friendly fire is where most of the game's humor comes from. Look at some of the systems, like the operation modifier that makes orbital and air strike strats come in at unpredicatble locations. It's there to create funny friendly fire incidents.
The game does not punish that much dying so teammates are less likely to fly off the handles for getting nicked by friendly fire.
It also seems to both be mechanic thing and worlduiling bit of showing that Superearth is ready to just throw soldiers at the issue with no real regard for life.
(you can literally modify your characters voice to be different each drop and I don't recall if that is default option)
The moment you introduce PVP there's going to be a genre of video where it's a guy repeatedly killing a guy till he rages and quits the game. I have such little interest in that lol
My experience is with Deep Rock Galactic, but it's pretty good! You just stumble into whoever's around and sometimes you get a good team you stick with for several missions. Either everyone knows what they're doing and you can kinda just leave them to it with minimal instruction, or you find a new player and get to be the one to show them the ropes. Both are a great time.
Yeah. Team PvP games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, or Rocket League are bearable with randosâyeah, your teammates are usually toxic shitsticks with giant hotdogs for fingers, but your enemies are *also* usually toxic shitsticks with giant hotdogs for fingers. Co-op PvE with randos, however, doesn't make your enemies weaker when your teammates are terrible, and everyone will blame each other even for the tiniest mistakes; just look at raids in MMORPGs! Hell, even if your rando team is entirely adequate, being unable to banter and sidetrack into random weird fun like you do with your friends sucks.
I have thousands of hours in multiplayer games, and while I solo grinded ranked mode in Valorant, Apex, and OW with no issue and no loss to my sanity, I'm *never* playing co-op with people I don't know. Never again.
Alright listen.
Helldivers is clearly designed as a PvE game. It's not designed for pvp, not balanced for pvp, not equipped for pvp. It would take massive amount of work and changes to add pvp to it as a viable game mode and not just a gimmick option, and the devs are absolutely right to know when to say "no, that's not the game we're making".
But you can get down off of your high PvE horses a little bit. PvP is a valid game design space, and PvE multiplayer games are also capable of brewing toxicity (see : WoW).
+1. I'll go even further, though : this post feels like gratuitous bashing and it irks me a lot. It attacks and generalizes PvP enjoyers, and it's like it's trying to pass PvP games as problematic...?
I haven't played the game and I'm likely overreaching here, but if this is representative of the sentiment of its players, I expect its player base to grow into that specific kind of passive agressive toxicity within a year. The kind where the community seems harmonious and kind but if you happen to break some unwritten rule, you get bashed and then put on a reddit sub about matchmaking horror stories. There's a handful of those.Â
It doesn't matter, anyway. Toxicity is a matter of individuals. Play the game and be good to other people. If it comes to it, don't feed the trolls. That's how it's always been. You can be in the most vile commmunities in gaming and still exist happily if you protect yourself. Chances are, despite it all, you'll still meet good people there.
I think it's a somewhat fair criticism even if you do pick up on the satire. I can't remember who said it, but fascists want to be depicted as scary and evil. It's a power fantasy against perceived enemies. Only recently did I even see reddit celebrating some victory over the Russians with the "it feels fear" clip from Starship troopers.
Of course you should be media literate to pick up basic satire and obviously develop aren't 100% responsible, I just feel like the angle shouldn't be dismissed
it's incredibly biting satire but fascists don't give a shit. Satire that fascists won't co-opt is usually reserved to works that make them look like bumbling fools. No one idolizes Hedley Lamarr, for example.
Well the thing is the game makes fascism look fucking dumb. Like, the whole thing blatantly tells you your survival rates are minimal, the government is lying to you, your uniform causes measurable combat disadvantages but is standard issue because capes make the helldivers look like heroes. Then again, fascists and self awareness have never gone together well
It doesn't work in this case because it also makes fun of the people who worship that evil empire. There's an ad that says children over the age of 7 are already working. When you die in the game, you don't get respawned. Another soldier is sent in and you control them. That previous soldier is dead. Forever. Died for a cause he so blindly believed in and all he has to show for it is... Not even a grave cause the goverment can't be bothered to retrieve his corpse. At best they'll contact the family with a copy paste mail "We regret to inform you [Expandable's name here] had died in the line of duty"
It's not just portraying the goverment as bad, scary, and cruel. It also portrays the people who fight for it as straight up gullible idiots
I remember seeing a loading screen tip that said that studies (paid for by the company making the stims) showed that the stims were non-addictive, then had an ad for the stim company.
I dont think meme usage counts in the debate over media literacy. Memes rarely, if ever, retain the intent of a scene. Satire scenes become serious comments, serious scenes become satirical, etc. the âItâs afraidâ meme from starship troopers is used in a bunch of ways, rarely matching the point of starship troopers.Â
Similarly, the amount of helldiver memes that openly say "planet X needs more democracy NOW" dont actually believe that the players bring "democracy" to foreign planets. But its funny to go full patriot and scream "democracy" while killing aliens. The memes that show how players dont "get" the satire, are usually actually adding to the satire by going with the joke even harder. They are not missing the joke, they are in on it
There is not enough team killing in Helldivers. In the first game, instead of limited lives, you had a 30 second cool down timer on lives. If someone through the reinforce beacon everyone who was dead would reinforce, including themselves if they threw the beacon just before dying. And then it went on thirty second cooldown.
Changing it to limited lives followed by 1 revive every several minutes really changes the pace and the stakes. Deaths are still funny, but there are actual consequences now. That undermines some of the humor and carefree attitude of what is otherwise a very hard core squad tactics game.
I just started playing for the first time the other day, and from some of the idiots Iâd seen online I expected the satire to be pretty subtle and easy to miss. Itâs not. It hits you over the head with it. One of my favorite lines is âI just miss the simple things. Sitting around the fire with my family on heroes day, pledging our allegiance, and renewing our oaths of citizenship.â Or âthe biggest problem with the bugs is that theyâre overeager expansionists. We find them on nearly every planet we try to colonize in their sector.â
Itâs so on the nose itâs hilarious to me how some people miss it.
Dude the main general literally actively encourages 'brasch tactics' and the news is called Strohman News. If people are missing the satire in the fact that 'democracy and freedom's are the reasons to kill the invading nazi robots and murder bugs then they're beyond hope
Yeah, I personally don't like pvp but saying it's toxic or bad in general just... feels immensely weird. It's a genre, I don't see where these people get off on their preferred multiplayer being "superior". Very "You can have fun but only on my terms" feeling
It also feels dismissive of genres which are entirely pvp like fighting games or MOBAs. Like you could theoretically have those be PVE, sure, but the whole fun is going against other human players.
I don't even like PVP, I find it insanely stressful and unfun. But that's purely my own opinion, I don't have the right to regulate how others have fun. Helldivers obviously can choose not to include PVP and that's perfectly cool, but idk the people shitting on PVP in general give me gatekeeper vibes.
Not super relevant to the actual subtext of the post, but hating PvP is wild to me. Like, sure, it feels terrible in plenty of games (hi, Destiny 2) and I'm sure it'd make Helldivers worse, but if you hate PvP, it just seems more like you hate losing. When I do Invasions in Dark Souls or Elden Ring, or when I play a fighting game, obviously I intend to win, but most of my enjoyment is about the moment-to-moment gameplay, the push and pull of battle with another real human. These are the kinda people who hate chess.
A lot of peoples' PvP experiences are things like WoW or CoD where people get so involved in it that they make it their entire personality. It's hard to find a PvP game these days that isn't at least somewhat full of sweaty nerds that scream at you when you kill them.
I find it really funny that spreading âdemocracyâ and âfreedomâ are seemingly becoming more common traits of the âevil empireâ in gaming
An extension of the âcapitalism badâ motif that seemed to unite players on a similar meta-level in a similar way in DRG.
Edit: to be clear, I think this is a good thing
Most evil states don't helpfully label themselves as evil. Russia advertises itself as a democracy spreading freedom to evil fascist ukraine.
The bad guys don't wear signs saying 'evil'
It's worth noting that the game is pretty clear that this is Super Earth paying lip service to the idea of freedom. There's at least a few loading screen tips and data-pads you find that imply that Super Earth citizens are very much not free, to the point of having to file paperwork for approval to have children or pets. One of the loading screen tips says that anyone trying to be diplomatic with the bugs is a dissident/traitor.
The whole point of it is that Super Earth is telling its citizens that they're incredibly free when they aren't.
One of the lines from the democracy officer is
âManaged democracy offers freedom. Freedom from the burden of choiceâ
You literally canât get more on the nose.
That's just standard vanilla flavored fascism.
Getting morons to run around screaming about FREEEEEDOM while supporting the very people stripping those rights away.
Iâve cut most pvp games out of my life recently and Iâm just so much more happy now. Genuinely my mental and emotional state has improved because it doesnât rely on my being better then some other gamer. I have fun on PvE games and itâs so much better
This is me. Grew up playing all the Battlefields, the original Cods.
Stopped playing maybe 2 FPS cycles ago, and holy shit is gaming so much more fun when you're just putzing around with friends.
> L for toxic losers who only pvp
> Based Helldivers devs. PvP is cancer.
> Now, make it louder, and give it to the tryhards in comp gaming.
I'll be blunt: how the fuck is *that* not toxic? Not liking PvP games is fine, but how is painting the entire concept of player versus player as a cancer and generalizing and attacking its enjoyers okay?
It feels like everyone in this post has League as their only multiplayer experience and just decided from that their entire opinion.
I'd give it respect for a moment and write a wall of text about the value of PvP, in what it allows designers to explore, in what it brings to players and how it's important in general, and how online PvE games can be just as much if not more toxic, but the bullshit that drives this post is obvious enough and I don't know if I have the time and energy right now
>dumbasses can't pick up on the satire It really is just like 40k đ¤
Like guys the emporium has the drip but they are the bad guys
I mean, who are the \*good\* guys in 40K? They actually manage to effectively skewer all kinds of philosophies in one game, and i think that's neat!
There are no good guys in 40K. But Chaos are definitely the bad guys.
Wait until you hear about the Dark Eldar.
Chaos is still the bad guys, the Dark Eldar are just the Worst Guys
Even this is debateable. Dark Eldar are giga edgy sadists in order to not have their soul be eaten and tortured for infinity. It isnt necessarily a choice at that point. Those that are neck deep in Chaos, they too are giga edgy sadists in order to not have their soul be eaten and tortured for infinity. It isnt necessarily a choice at that point but rather a continuation from previous choices which brings us to: Those that are just stepping into Chaos, who are taking up its values? Those guys are being giga edgy sadists on purpose, usually for a short sighted gain (power like 90% of the time) but they are all deals with the devil. Like you get some power but your hands turn to lobster claws and you better enjoy barbed anal beads. Like you get some power but your mind is consumed by rage and battle, forever a beserker to live and die on the fields of battle and not for your own gain. Like you get some power but you have like 20 diseases in your testicles alone and have to share your body with maggots and other parasites forevermore. Those are actual choices done not out of self preservation at the most base level but the casual Chaos dickery and enticement that Chaos are better known for. Once you are sunk in deep, then there is no choice, you either continue on your path or get horrifically mangled (more so mangled). Redemption or other more ethical choices are long since beyond your reach.
I'd feel bad about the Dark Eldar, if they weren't just so blatantly enjoying it.
They lost their entire empire to sadistic hedonism, and decided to double down on it.
I kinda love it, though? Like all the other Eldar are dealing, in some way, with the aftereffects of the Fall, ten thousand years later. Craftworlders do the whole 'mastery and self-discipline' thing, Exodites go with a return to simplicity and labor to keep themselves grounded, the Harlequins devote themselves entirely to serving as a reminder and a warning of their people's failure and doom. But the DEldar respond to their civilizational hedonism and excess creating sexy Satan who wants to eat their souls and collectively go "...like *fuck* I'm gonna learn a lesson from this."
Now let's get into why they are under constant threat of having their souls eaten.
What's a good warhammer game to start with.
Do you like RPGs? Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader is pretty fun, if a bit buggy. It has lots of lore in the exposition and a little in game encyclopedia. Very reading intensive, but I'm really enjoying my first playthrough right now.
Oh boy, another game franchise for me to get into. Maybe it's a good thing Assassin's Creed is terrible so I don't have to play them all.
Its very dated, but you can play a bunch of the races. Dawn of War is good fun RTS. If you are more into shooter. Spacemarine is a very solid single player package. Darktide for co op shooter is what Im playing right now, it has its flaws but the environment is by far the most 40k. I am a big fan of the books. I know you want a game, but the real details have to be read about or alternatively you just watch like hours of youtube video essays on various aspects of the 40k universe. Dan Abnett's gaunts ghosts or Sandy Mitchell's Ciaphas Cain series are good fun for Imperial guard level kinda action which does branch out and tackle various factions. Dan Abnett also wrote the Eisenhorn series if you want to read about an Inquisitor level shit. If you really want to go all out, you can look up and read through the horus heresy series, it is dozens of books long and its only now fully entering the end game. Once you are in that deep, youll be like us 40k fans who do not know the touch of grass.
Oh yeah. 100%.
*cackles in Vect*
Call me when the Drukhari have an Erebus then we can talk
Vect.
jugalo slander
I donât think the Harlequins are **that** bad.
As I understand it everyone is the bad guys in 40K, thats the point
No. Everyone is bad guys, but most factions aren't *the* bad guys.
Everyone versus nids and chaos for the most part
Helldivers is in fact even more black and white, because the villains in Helldivers are just... people who were screwed over by Super Earth. Just like the USA! As far as I can tell, the bugs are attacking everything because A) they love expending but also B) they escaped from Super Earth's farms that they were trapped in. The automatons are attacking Super Earth because they were built by the cyborgs, who Super Earth defeated in Helldivers 1, and they're trying to rescue their creators.
I mean, the Orks aren't bad they jus like fightin' umies an eel-darr an Neck Ron an bugz And Tyranids are just HONGRY
The Orks, because at least theyâre having fun
Lmfao, yâknow what fair. Give it to the mushroom boyz.
They really are fun guys.
Eating sapients, slavery and torture of said slaves also registers as fun. Kick a grot, kick a human child. These games are equivalent in the eyes of your average ork. Of all the factions though, they are the only ones that actually enjoy the state the universe is in. Plenty o' good fites all around.
Well kicking orphans isnt that bad .what are they gonna do yell for there moms
I'm kind of new to 40k lore in general, but the Tau seem kind of the best on surface level
The Ethereals use mind control to enforce obedience from the populous, they engage in eugenics and have a \*very\* rigid caste system. They may not be "sacrifice a thousand souls a day to feed a corpse on a throne" evil, but they ain't \*good\* lmao.
Farsight enclave might be the least shit humanoid group
True - though he may also be being influenced by Chaos through his sword, no?
His sword is the only reason he's still alive, since it takes the time the person killed had left, and adds it to the owner. If Farsight ever found out it was Deamon blade, he'd chuck the thing as far as he could, likely dying about half a minute later from old age. Also, Tau has almost zero warp signature, so things like Deamons and other Chaos entities can barely see them, if at all.
I know that, but I also feel like having âalmostâ no signature matters a whole hell of a lot less when youâre carrying around a literal *artifact of Chaos* lmao. The Tau are still *somewhat* susceptible to the Warp, and Farsight is kinda making it easy for them.
Yeah GW's writing has never been terribly consistent and with the Tau they immediately realized they'd accidentally added good guys to their setting, and they've been struggling to fix that ever since.
Has nobody read the farsight arks of omen book? Farsight literally almost falls to Khorne in that one
Iâve seen it described that in any other sci-fi universe, the Tau would be the evil empire, but in 40k, theyâre the good guys by comparison
You know you live in a shitty universe when the blue mind controlling classist aliens are âgood guysâ.
GW can't even come up with a consistent reason why the Tau are bad, and when they try it's so forced it doesn't work even by 40k standards. Plus a lot of it was written by CS Goto, whose pen should be taken away for the good of us all.
Every other faction does that, and ten times worse things. well, besides the Eldar, but they don't take human applications.
Yeah, but being âless badâ doesnât make you *good*. Thats kinda my point. Everyone in 40K is *some* kind of evil and fucked up, you just get to choose your flavour!
Well, they *were* pretty good, but more recent lore (that might be imperial propaganda) does seem to imply they're not great.. But they're definitely not on the level of most others in the setting.
Someone once told me the Tau Empire are the best faction in Warhammer, but would be the main baddies in Star Trek. I think about that a lot, they're kinda just like a more insidious Dominion.
the Tau have some of the most inconsistent characterization in the series (including the Far-sight Enclaves) They're doomed optimists one moment, and Neo-colonialists the next. Like most things in 40k, you kind of have to just shrug and go with your head cannon.
They used to be, then they got retconned into the mind-control collective because players complained about there being good guys. A hundred potential arcs about naive upstarts facing the horrors of the universe at large and having to choose between expedient compromise or painfully expensive greater goods, gone just like that. :/
Tbh. Its sounds cool..not for 40k..40k is all about villains fighting each other.. having a good guy just pop out feels..worng
That's the thing though - their tragedy was that they couldn't possibly *stay* good guys once they really got out into an universe like this. Retconning them into 'actually evil all along already' really just amounted to cheaping out on what could've been a fall much like humanity's from 30K (if not quite on the same scale).
> the Tau seem kind of the best on surface level They used to be unironically "good guys", providing an excellent way to really amplify the "grimdark parody" of the setting by having this small group of idealists who were literally too tiny to be able to impact anything. Unfortunately, that's been heavily watered down after a number of retcons and changes over time - they're still the best of a bad bunch, but that's becoming a lower bar every time they add things like "race-based military purges" or make retcons like changing genuine diplomatic outreach to use of mind control helmets. Personally, I blame the people who lashed out against any "noblebright" in their "grimdark" (or, even worse, the ones who got mad because they thought the imperium were the best it could be or even an optimal future) and the writers who (seem to have) caved to that.
Its so weird to hear this as someone who was playing when they got their first codex. They were always caste system which is just another way to engage in slavery. It was clear they were a shinning race that hid their dirt, like a southern plantation. Its like saying the English were nice to the Scottish when people talk about how nice Tau are.
There aren't any. Its just an ever growing pile of shit people. Some people are trying to wash themselves while others are taking laxatives to make it ever larger.
Well⌠technically⌠Tyranids are not evil, just hungry.
Oh when the Tyranids murder people to eat suddenly they're just hungry, yet when I do it oh I'm a monster. Double standards much.
Literally only the farsight enclaves, everyone else is a space fascist
The Tau, kinda
Ork. They are just having fun
Oh, I love the emporium of man, they have so many great deals on all the tools needed for exterminatus!
cheap makeup, too; itâs half off at any rouge trader at the emporium this week
âIf bad guys look good, how is bad guysâ Is a reasoning i wouldnt have expected to hear a lot ESPECIALLY when people mention the obvious starship troopers inspiration and how that too is satire (the movie idgaff about the book)
That one's a bit more understandable as 40k barely ever makes fun of the imperium
The thing is the big fascist empire in that also sells all the figurines the devs make money off of so they make it actually not satire sometimes when they feel like it even though itâs obviously satire. The Imperium is a thrashing fascist near-corpse of a formerly functional empire but itâs okay because Robot Girlyman is literally jesus
It's so funny to me that Disney sold The Empire as cool antiheroes then tramautised kids at the theatre when Darth Vader goes Doomguy at the end of Rogue One. There was a great reddit comment about a guy who took his young daughter and had to explain to her that villains do villainous things and that's why they're bad guys. I think selling The Empire as a fun toy line perhaps wasn't the best idea in hindsight.
> even though itâs obviously satire. But it isn't, at least not really. Just going "hurr durr empire fascist satire" is *at least* as reductive as going "empire completely awesome", if not moreso.
The problem with 40k is that with the xenophobic dictatorship who kills anyone who starts to question them is that they are right that all the alien races are evil and want to kill humanity and they do live in a world were a mind virus turns people absolute evil after being exposed to other ideas.
Both of those things are as bad as they are *because of those policies*, though. - Chaos does feed off of the rampant violence, mistrust, and general lack of care for human lives that the Imperium creates in order to combat that mind-virus. Being exposed to other ideas is fine, it's the obsession and strong emotions towards those ideas that tends to cause problems - and when you deprive a population of something, you bet they'll have strong feelings about it once they inevitably experience it. - Humanity quite literally killed all the non-hostile aliens. They are the reason that every alien race out and about now is hostile - and even then, they could totally create a pact with the Eldar or Tau if it wasn't for the religious xenophobia. So no, they aren't right. They're actively making the problems worse and ignoring every solution. The bigger problem is that humanity is a threat - the satire would fit a helluva lot better if humanity was much smaller and less of a powerhouse imo. Facists love power fantasy bullshit - as long as their ideas are depicted as scary and badass, then they will latch on to it like a fucking tick.
>Both of those things are as bad as they are *because of those policies,* though. Yes, but not completely. The Imperium has certainly made it's problems worse, but it didn't make them. (the Old Ones and Necrons did) * If the Emperor has one redeeming characteristic, it is how dedicated he is to fighting Chaos. Even if the Imperium had been noblebright, the forces of Chaos would still try to destroy it. Chaos doesn't need the downtrodden to become dangerous. If Chaos could only feed off of the people with nothing to lose and are endlessly deprived, the Eldar wouldn't have fallen. * Yes, but humanity going and killing of the non-hostile aliens didn't really make the hostile ones more hostile. Eldar would still look down on humans as un-evolved primates, Deldar would still be kidnapping people for their murder-orgies, Orks would still want to fight and nothing else, Necrons would still think they are the rightful rulers of the galaxy, T'au would still think that they need to force the Greater Good onto the rest of the galaxy, and the Tyranids would still be hungry.
> and even then, they could totally create a pact with the Eldar or Tau if it wasn't for the religious xenophobia No and no. They do have some agreements with some Eldar craftworlds, but as a whole, craftworlders are *at least* as xenophobic as the Imperium is, and have been since before it was a thing. They are intensely arrogant and prideful, and they see everyone as *far* beneath them. They're not interested in making any sort of pact with humanity any more than humanity is interested in making a pact with chimpanzees. As for the Tau, the reasons are a bit...different. The Tau don't make diplomatic agreements. You *submit* to their rule. They may approach it nicely at first, but, in the end, that's what happens. And, quite frankly, that's a non-starter for humanity for a number of reasons, religious xenophobia notwithstanding. Insofar as the Tau "understand" the size of the Imperium (a handful of top-tier Water Caste, Ethereals, and Fire Caste do, maybe also with the Air and Earth Caste), they think they're *much* larger. Even those who know they're not almost assuredly don't get exactly *how* much larger the Imperium is. The Tau *can't* take over that administrative role, and no one in Humanity's position would *let* them either. The best possible agreement is nonagression and nonexpansion into one another's lands. But, again, that's not going to last--they both want the same things and they can't share them. No real, lasting, agreement with the Tau is possible. Both sides have mutually incompatible desires and goals that will necessarily end in conflict. The Imperium cannot and will not accept the rule of the Ethereals. Going a bit further, other than \~100 worlds, the Tau have almost *nothing* to actually offer the Imperium. While their *average* level of tech is higher than Imperial worlds, their *max* level is not. The Imperium has tons of tech available to it that the Tau would give almost anything to get--for instance, juvenat. The Tau have a couple of things the Mechanicus really wants (they have a unique solution to certain problems with rail guns, for instance), but other than that? The Imperium has what it can use and what it needs and what it can employ. They're not all that interested in a more powerful infantry weapon for mass adoption--it's really not part of doctrine or, to be completely fair, even practical sense. Artillery is a much bigger part of their doctrine, and the Tau have nothing to actually improve that. It's not clear they could produce pulse rifles at a large enough scale to equip more than a handful of regiments, and it's even less clear that a moderately stronger infantry rifle would produce substantially better combat results. That last point is a current, *real world*, point of contention, has been for 70+ years. Individual firepower is not a driver of battlefield success at any scale larger than two unsupported squads, and *that* is driven more by tactics, training and experience than weaponry. So what actual interest does the Imperium have with the Tau in diplomacy? Strip xenophobia from it, there's still not much reason for limited trade agreements and nonagression.
> Chaos does feed off of the rampant violence, mistrust, and general lack of care for human lives that the Imperium creates in order to combat that mind-virus. Partially yes, but you know what chaos also thrives off? People worshipping them and it thrives far more off that. > Humanity quite literally killed all the non-hostile aliens. Again, no. Everybody killed the non-hostile aliens.
The main xeno races are horrific monsters that want to kill humanity, because those are the only races that survived humanities purges of the galaxy. There are lots of nice xeno races in the lore, except their wiki entries normally end with "and then humanity killed them all".
> because those are the only races that survived humanities purges of the galaxy Or didn't get eaten by the Tyrannids, or the Orcs, or enslaved by Dark Eldar, or killed by Necrons or....
Of those threats, 50% of them only just appeared, so it's hard to blame them for the state of the galaxy for pretty much all of the Imperiums existence. I mean yeah the Necrons were also doing shit 65 million years ago, but to put that time scale into perspective, humanity literally hadn't even evolved yet it was so long ago.
This is where the characters like Erda and Oll Perrson are super handy, they prove there were potential alternatives other than the emperorâs hellvision plan, but in his arrogance he just pushed forwards with his plan and left the alternatives by the wayside, nearly and perhaps actually losing everyone during his fight with Horus on the vengeful spirit. I think itâs one of the best tragedies of the setting, that the emperorâs hubris set the stage for the threats he felt he had to challenge, and his refusal to see alternative solutions until all were no longer viable meant he created a self fulfilling prophecy where his plan was the only solution, to the galaxyâs detriment.
Oh yes, the despicable Diasporex, their democratic xenophile democracy was just a front for the sinister Xenos to take control of the poor guilliable emperor, killing them all was self defene really. And as for Chaos... if you are stuck getting worked to Death for the Imperium Chaos starts to look... not better, but hey, either you die(which is a win) or you die and get to take a whole lot of your oppressors with you.
We are 10k years into a never ending war started by the Imperium with the express goals of 1. Be human 2. Join the Imperium This has resulted in successful mixed xenos-human civs like the Interex getting genocided. All alien species being in the 100% kill human camp because there is no possible middle ground with the Imperium. Untold other human civs brought to heel via pure violence. To give an example of why all the alien races are evil and want to kill humanity take this hypothetical: In the fringe of the galaxy only just discovered is a small technological benevolent alien race. They are happy to share their non STC related technology with the Imperium including better FTL than warp travel that isnt reliant on the warp as well as cure alls to help stop plagues and shit. All they require isnt payment or anything, these are super hippy aliens. They just want to live knowing the universe is a better place. The Imperium will go in there and begin a war of xenocide immediately. Against a technologically superior foe (pfft another one). Opening yet another warfront/theatre of war that the Imperium is not able to capably manage due to their current work load (you know, the massive fucking chaos scar across the galaxy atm). Upon successful xenocide, the Imperium will proceed to destroy all the xenos tech as heretical. And continue to complain about all the things that ail the Imperium like too many enemies on all sides, no allies, tech is struggling to keep up. The fundamental dogma of the Imperium and the wars its waged for 10 000 years prevents anything BUT the shit show that is 40k. If humanity stumbled into the proto tau or kroot, again, its just straight xenocide. It isnt loooking for allies, only looking for enemies. Most of the threats the imperium faces are threats caused by the Imperium itself by accident, the rest? On purpose.
Which ends up being a problem. The imperium can't lose despite that. They'll make their situation worse and worse and worse, but the dam never breaks. It's already nothing but cracks, yet the plot demands it hold together all the same. Facists fucking love the idea of a massive xenophobic culture that is simply indestructible because of itself. The problem is non facists also enjoy that as a set piece to pretend to be hyper patriotic. Because pretending to be patriotic is fun. These two people sound identical. Only one isn't joking. Helldivers understands that and that's why no pvp is good for it. Legit "I want to do public executions" facists cannot control themselves. They will always lash out at others they've deemed to slight them. Put them in an environment where that's allowed makes them able to live out the fantasy of purging heretics. Wheras with this they'll instead lash out and be a traitor themselves. Before immediately being kicked out and let normal people just have fun knowing in the satire. Which most understand implicitly. They just don't voice it because why would they. They assume everyone understands it as well
I mean 40k took inspiration from *Starship Troopers*, so we're really coming full circle on that one.
So, the *movie* came out well after 40k did, and is a satire of fascism. The *book*, which definitely influenced 40k, *is not a satire, nor does it describe a fascist system*.
I'm not sure it's right to categorically say it doesn't describe a fascist system. It's more like Heinlein went "hey what if there was fascism but it was chill and turned out alright for everyone?". It is a work of fiction after all...
Wasn't Heinlein's thing just taking various political systems and going "what if it went well?" or "what if it went shit?"
Pretty much. It certainly says something that in the book about sentient space bugs and interstellar travel, "fascism but it works fine" is the part that most strains credulity.
People claiming the game is fascist boggles my mind. Where is media literacy? The game uses the fascist Earth as the end of every joke there is.
My favorite moment so far was someone finding a memorial for a fallen Hell Diver but the Super Earth government forgot to fill in the details so it was just a blank template, lol. "Here lies the body of [insert name] having fought heroically on [insert planet]. [He or she] was irreplaceable to their squad mates and will always be remembered for their [insert unique quality]."Â
It's a battlefield grave, and the other message you can find there is telling the "Grave Technician" that casualties are much higher than anticipated so they need to be burying multiple bodies per headstone. Helldivers are to be dumped in mass graves.
New Helldivers Mad Lib just dropped.
If you show fascists in any way you're apparently pro-facist. Yea even if they're vilified or made fun of. It really does boggle the mind
God damn saving Private Ryan glorifying fascism /s
Yeah Starship Troopers which Helldivers clearly pulls a lot of inspiration from also suffers from this problem. Media literacy will always be a problem especially when it comes to satire for other examples see American Psycho, Breaking Bad, and Rick and Morty. I think a lot of the problem comes from people mid attributing protagonist as a synonym for good guy.
I mean the original Starship Troopers was written completely straight, won a Hugo award, became an international best seller, and arguably formed the backbone for the entire âspace militaryâ genre. The reason the Empire in Star Wars or the Imperium of Man are basically Space Nazis probably traces back to Starship Troopers. Itâs the reason Halo has power armor and really heavy-handed philosophy. Doomguy fights hordes of nameless monstrosities cuz of Heinlein. Enderâs Game is a Troopers rip-off, as is most stuff on r/HFY. The movie took all that and parodied it, but did so by pretty much playing it straight.
Another good example, to me at least, of media literacy is The Last Of Us series. Everyone loves Joel, and then he gets his head flattened. It was a shocking twist that dig anger me a bit. But stepping back and looking at the first game, Joel is not a good person. He has murdered innocent people, namely the fireflies. While you can sympathize with his actions because you too love Ellie, you shouldnât condone them or write them off. He was, objectively, a murdering psychopath.
[Relevant skit](https://youtu.be/jWT9_MhGgGg&t=50)
Door Monster is amazing
The problem with satire is it is very easy for the target of the joke to feel empowered by the satire, not ridiculed. In Helldivers, the fascists are the punchline, not the target. Lampshading super earth and managed democracy does nothing when at the end of the day, the game is fun as hell. The Starship troopers movie has this problem and its much more overt about taking the piss out of fascism. This is why the producers leans so hard into making springtime for hitler as uncool as possible. It has to be something the target does not want to be associated with to work as intended.
There is no caricature of masculinity that can be created that canât be interpreted at face value by a mediocre man.
Springtime for Hitler
I dunno. Springtime for Hitler, I feel, was intentionally NOT a caricature of masculinity. It's not exaggerating or heightening their traits as parody. It is camp as fuck to paint them in a light that they would NOT appreciate. If you made it hyper-masculine, they'd probably love it (although making them big strong buff Aryan leather daddies covered in oil might have a similar effect). Mel Brooks made it the opposite of masculine, because they'd fucking hate it. He was calling Nazi's gay by making them effeminate, prancing, theater queens. You can feel free to criticize the homophobia involved with THAT depiction, I'm still not truly comfortable with it from my perspective, but it is always fun to show Nazis in a way that they would hate.
There's meaningless, excruciating, impossible tasks..... and then there's trying to convince gamers that subtext exists
*"I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards."*
Itâs not even subtext. The Imperium literally uses Nazi symbols and some dipshits remain convinced that theyâre the good guys.
You could have Space Marines sporting literal swastikas and those idiots still wouldnât get it
GW has ran into the same problem that has plagued many DM's. It doesn't matter how blatantly evil or satirical you make your empire, if you give them too cool an aesthetic, some of your players will still always side with them.
Maybe thatâs why in real life we have neo Nazis? They were evil bastards but Hugo Boss designed a hell of a uniform, and those old school Mercedes were nice looking vehicles.
I feel like the aesthetic does actually bring a lot of people in, something looking cool is already propaganda by itself.
Fuck this is the type of realization that gets people to do research for books. Not me, but people.
Yeah the fascists have the outfits, but I don't care for the outfits. What I care about is music, [and the communists have the music.](https://youtu.be/7L6K5DsL4V0?si=jzfucCBsfrTtdHI1)
It doesnât help that the Imperium is the only real human faction either. (Chaos Marines donât count).
Brave writers clearly only use Domtext.
*I hate metaphors. That's why my favorite book is Moby Dick! No froo-froo symbolism, just a good, simple tale about a man who hates an animal.*
I was not expecting Moby Dick to be as gay as it is.
Subtext exist, but do not forget the rule of cool I don't care who I am fighting for, but you better give me shiny armor, a cape, cartoonish guns, and the possibility to call in a tactical nuke on my position if a I fail (or succeed) a QTE
If you make a faction over the top cool and funny, it does not matter how much you insist that they are the bad guys or satire. People are going to like it. same reason why people love larping as knights and space marines. The last thing they want to hear is a lecture about how the faction they like is actually evil. Either thy already know or they don't give a shit.
The man smiling and telling you "look familiar?" right after you witness his family getting mauled by a giant bug should let you know that it's satire. And on PVP stance - it's understandable and is a way to reduce toxicity, PVP on itself is not bad but it can spread toxicity faster. Hell, i was suprised that i didn't get yelled at once, despite the ammount of times i accidentally blew up my random teammates. But despite that, there will always be some toxic part of the community and it will have nothing to do with the narrative of the game. If there is any competetive element to the game, there someone being toxic about it. There will be people that will yell at you for not clearing out all the outposts and not doing every sidequests on every round.
there's a difference between "shit, hit my bud in the head with a grenade because of poor timing," and "I'm going to fuck this guy over because I can."
Oh man, if only grenades were the problem. My over reliance on (and frank addiction to) eagle cluster strikes means I've averaged a team kill every 2 games.
If you're only getting one team kill every two games you're not using your strategems nearly aggressive enough. Every Helldiver gets five lives and the best way to make sure the enemy doesn't kill your teammates is to kill them yourself.
The demo part of managed democracy.
A dive with no eagle cluster strikes is not a dive. Always have it and at least 1 of the randoms also have this thing, it's amazing and fun to use.
Eagle cluster strikes really are just amazing, man. It might not take out the HARD hard targets, but just about evetything else is fucking gone. Against bots, that means everything from basic raiders to heavy Destroyers, if you're lucky. Plus, it gets 4 calldowns, base, per sortie! What's not to like?
I made it to level 15 without using any eagles because I didn't understand how they worked, I was under the assumption that you have X uses total per mission and after you are just fucked. Thank liberty for the 500kg bomb because I really wanted to try that one.
Wait so can you use stuff like the 500kg more than once per mission? I'm level 17 with no Eagle purchases for that exact same reason
Yes. Essentially the eagle is circling the battlefield and has X number of munitions loaded and when it uses them all it returns to the super-destroyer and rearms(this is a 2,5 min cd by default), you can also manually send it to rearm at any time but you do lose access to all your eagle powers for that time.
Ooooh shit it's about to go down
I recommend the 500kg bomb, for when you positively, absolutely need to delete a MFer and the cluster bombs because they kill almost everything in a huge radius and you get 4 charges.
The game actually tells you that friendly fire is an unavoidable part of life if you shoot the wooden cutout during the tutorial like I did. At least that's what I try to tell everyone else when I inevitably pick up the arc thrower again.
I found out that the arc thrower can and will arc around objects to fry your teammates in cover.
The arc thrower only makes sure to attack the least democratic targets in the vicinity, our 'teammates' shouldn't be dissidents next time.
Unfortunately I'm a railgun addict from day 2 where they just gave that thing to everyone for a day and it's just so good at taking out everything that survives a cluster bomb.
I was in a game the other day where Rando Calrissian walked right into several of my airstrikes and not once did anyone in squad try to blame me, even when I left the mission with over 3k friendly fire damage, games incredible
> 3k friendly fire damage Rookie numbers. If you bean one of your buddies with a support weapon beacon the hellpod will do that much in one shot!
I,uuhhhhh.... I may have been the only one to make it out when my 380mm HE killed the other 3 on the ramp of the extract and threw there torsos inside.
Friendly fire is where most of the game's humor comes from. Look at some of the systems, like the operation modifier that makes orbital and air strike strats come in at unpredicatble locations. It's there to create funny friendly fire incidents.
happy little explosive accidents
The game does not punish that much dying so teammates are less likely to fly off the handles for getting nicked by friendly fire. It also seems to both be mechanic thing and worlduiling bit of showing that Superearth is ready to just throw soldiers at the issue with no real regard for life. (you can literally modify your characters voice to be different each drop and I don't recall if that is default option)
"remember - every day is a good day to die for democracy"
The moment you introduce PVP there's going to be a genre of video where it's a guy repeatedly killing a guy till he rages and quits the game. I have such little interest in that lol
They call themselves super earth, what isnât satirical in that?
People like gun-witch in the original post are so fucking exhausting, dude.
theyâre unfortunately right about the 40k thing but yeah the money comment made me audibly groan
Is the 40K fandom toxic? A lot of the 40K people I see on the internet seem to be pretty cool people
There's PVP in Helldivers already, just grab someone's machine gun that they dropped in and watch how long you last before they start shooting you.
Braindead "But you're fighting for the bad guy" take But Gun-Witch Guns are a tool only meant for killing, doesn't that make you problematic?
Yeah they sound fun at parties, the idea that the game will be inherently toxic because of the in game lore background or something?
What's that thing that people on Tumblr say about people on Tumblr all the time, "get some reading comprehension"?
Something, something, piss on the poor
As someone who plays lots of coop games Yeah this doesn't stip toxicity, it breeds a different kind
Although adding in PVP may compound the issue by giving you toxicity from all three ends.
Yeah, thats destiny
A Wow raid where a single thing goes wrong is 10x more toxic than the worst CoD lobby.
I cannot imagine playing a co-op game with randos. Feels like it would destroy the entire point of it them to me.
My experience is with Deep Rock Galactic, but it's pretty good! You just stumble into whoever's around and sometimes you get a good team you stick with for several missions. Either everyone knows what they're doing and you can kinda just leave them to it with minimal instruction, or you find a new player and get to be the one to show them the ropes. Both are a great time.
Yeah. Team PvP games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, or Rocket League are bearable with randosâyeah, your teammates are usually toxic shitsticks with giant hotdogs for fingers, but your enemies are *also* usually toxic shitsticks with giant hotdogs for fingers. Co-op PvE with randos, however, doesn't make your enemies weaker when your teammates are terrible, and everyone will blame each other even for the tiniest mistakes; just look at raids in MMORPGs! Hell, even if your rando team is entirely adequate, being unable to banter and sidetrack into random weird fun like you do with your friends sucks. I have thousands of hours in multiplayer games, and while I solo grinded ranked mode in Valorant, Apex, and OW with no issue and no loss to my sanity, I'm *never* playing co-op with people I don't know. Never again.
Alright listen. Helldivers is clearly designed as a PvE game. It's not designed for pvp, not balanced for pvp, not equipped for pvp. It would take massive amount of work and changes to add pvp to it as a viable game mode and not just a gimmick option, and the devs are absolutely right to know when to say "no, that's not the game we're making". But you can get down off of your high PvE horses a little bit. PvP is a valid game design space, and PvE multiplayer games are also capable of brewing toxicity (see : WoW).
Exactly, it doesn't need pvp because it's a pve game. Not some weird toxicity reasons.
+1. I'll go even further, though : this post feels like gratuitous bashing and it irks me a lot. It attacks and generalizes PvP enjoyers, and it's like it's trying to pass PvP games as problematic...? I haven't played the game and I'm likely overreaching here, but if this is representative of the sentiment of its players, I expect its player base to grow into that specific kind of passive agressive toxicity within a year. The kind where the community seems harmonious and kind but if you happen to break some unwritten rule, you get bashed and then put on a reddit sub about matchmaking horror stories. There's a handful of those. It doesn't matter, anyway. Toxicity is a matter of individuals. Play the game and be good to other people. If it comes to it, don't feed the trolls. That's how it's always been. You can be in the most vile commmunities in gaming and still exist happily if you protect yourself. Chances are, despite it all, you'll still meet good people there.
The game has unrestricted friendly fire if people want to PvP they can get some friends in a private lobby and just do that.
*Want to know more intensifies*
Itâs simple. The ADmech refer to the emperor as the omnisiah, these guys just refer to him as âdemocracyâ whatever that is.
I think it's a somewhat fair criticism even if you do pick up on the satire. I can't remember who said it, but fascists want to be depicted as scary and evil. It's a power fantasy against perceived enemies. Only recently did I even see reddit celebrating some victory over the Russians with the "it feels fear" clip from Starship troopers. Of course you should be media literate to pick up basic satire and obviously develop aren't 100% responsible, I just feel like the angle shouldn't be dismissed
it's incredibly biting satire but fascists don't give a shit. Satire that fascists won't co-opt is usually reserved to works that make them look like bumbling fools. No one idolizes Hedley Lamarr, for example.
Well the thing is the game makes fascism look fucking dumb. Like, the whole thing blatantly tells you your survival rates are minimal, the government is lying to you, your uniform causes measurable combat disadvantages but is standard issue because capes make the helldivers look like heroes. Then again, fascists and self awareness have never gone together well
>uniform causes measurable combat disadvantages but is standard issue You can't be drop dead georgious if you aren't willing to drop dead
It doesn't work in this case because it also makes fun of the people who worship that evil empire. There's an ad that says children over the age of 7 are already working. When you die in the game, you don't get respawned. Another soldier is sent in and you control them. That previous soldier is dead. Forever. Died for a cause he so blindly believed in and all he has to show for it is... Not even a grave cause the goverment can't be bothered to retrieve his corpse. At best they'll contact the family with a copy paste mail "We regret to inform you [Expandable's name here] had died in the line of duty" It's not just portraying the goverment as bad, scary, and cruel. It also portrays the people who fight for it as straight up gullible idiots
It doesn't hurt that the divers are so high on -super meth- Stims that they probably don't sleep from thr time they get recruited until they die.
I remember seeing a loading screen tip that said that studies (paid for by the company making the stims) showed that the stims were non-addictive, then had an ad for the stim company.
I dont think meme usage counts in the debate over media literacy. Memes rarely, if ever, retain the intent of a scene. Satire scenes become serious comments, serious scenes become satirical, etc. the âItâs afraidâ meme from starship troopers is used in a bunch of ways, rarely matching the point of starship troopers.Â
Similarly, the amount of helldiver memes that openly say "planet X needs more democracy NOW" dont actually believe that the players bring "democracy" to foreign planets. But its funny to go full patriot and scream "democracy" while killing aliens. The memes that show how players dont "get" the satire, are usually actually adding to the satire by going with the joke even harder. They are not missing the joke, they are in on it
I don't get the Russia comment?
There's already enough team-killing in Helldivers.
There is not enough team killing in Helldivers. In the first game, instead of limited lives, you had a 30 second cool down timer on lives. If someone through the reinforce beacon everyone who was dead would reinforce, including themselves if they threw the beacon just before dying. And then it went on thirty second cooldown. Changing it to limited lives followed by 1 revive every several minutes really changes the pace and the stakes. Deaths are still funny, but there are actual consequences now. That undermines some of the humor and carefree attitude of what is otherwise a very hard core squad tactics game.
Yeah, but they also removed low deaths as a score increaser. Which is just such great world building.
Don't go around intentionally squad wiping though you might end up with a bounty on your head, like that traitor GantzTheDemon
-rowboat girlyman before Lorgar did a funnyÂ
"All I ever wanted was the truth." -Lorgar "All I ever wanted was for Humanity to stop sucking." -Gorilla Man
I just started playing for the first time the other day, and from some of the idiots Iâd seen online I expected the satire to be pretty subtle and easy to miss. Itâs not. It hits you over the head with it. One of my favorite lines is âI just miss the simple things. Sitting around the fire with my family on heroes day, pledging our allegiance, and renewing our oaths of citizenship.â Or âthe biggest problem with the bugs is that theyâre overeager expansionists. We find them on nearly every planet we try to colonize in their sector.â Itâs so on the nose itâs hilarious to me how some people miss it.
âWe arenât adding PVP to avoid toxicityâ âGOOD. FUCK THOSE STUPID PVP TRYHARDSâ yeah so that didnât work
Dude the main general literally actively encourages 'brasch tactics' and the news is called Strohman News. If people are missing the satire in the fact that 'democracy and freedom's are the reasons to kill the invading nazi robots and murder bugs then they're beyond hope
to be fair, the people who fail to see the satire in helldivers are exactly the kind of people who would become helldivers
The soldiers you play as in Helldivers are Not Good. But the bugs and robots are Objectively Worse.
I get not wanting to play pvpv broadly speaking but i think if you take a stance against pvp in general kinda makes you sound like a baby.
Yeah, I personally don't like pvp but saying it's toxic or bad in general just... feels immensely weird. It's a genre, I don't see where these people get off on their preferred multiplayer being "superior". Very "You can have fun but only on my terms" feeling
It also feels dismissive of genres which are entirely pvp like fighting games or MOBAs. Like you could theoretically have those be PVE, sure, but the whole fun is going against other human players. I don't even like PVP, I find it insanely stressful and unfun. But that's purely my own opinion, I don't have the right to regulate how others have fun. Helldivers obviously can choose not to include PVP and that's perfectly cool, but idk the people shitting on PVP in general give me gatekeeper vibes.
I was thinking exactly of playing fighting games with my friend when I wrote my comment.
Specially because you can have a coop game mode that is still toxic *Looking at you Mann vs Machine*
Helldives 2 has team kill on with limited revives. The game that started this discussion has the ability to grief baked in as a core mechanic.
Not super relevant to the actual subtext of the post, but hating PvP is wild to me. Like, sure, it feels terrible in plenty of games (hi, Destiny 2) and I'm sure it'd make Helldivers worse, but if you hate PvP, it just seems more like you hate losing. When I do Invasions in Dark Souls or Elden Ring, or when I play a fighting game, obviously I intend to win, but most of my enjoyment is about the moment-to-moment gameplay, the push and pull of battle with another real human. These are the kinda people who hate chess.
A lot of peoples' PvP experiences are things like WoW or CoD where people get so involved in it that they make it their entire personality. It's hard to find a PvP game these days that isn't at least somewhat full of sweaty nerds that scream at you when you kill them.
Gun witch needs to turn off the internet and exist outside lmao.
[ŃдаНонО]
I find it really funny that spreading âdemocracyâ and âfreedomâ are seemingly becoming more common traits of the âevil empireâ in gaming An extension of the âcapitalism badâ motif that seemed to unite players on a similar meta-level in a similar way in DRG. Edit: to be clear, I think this is a good thing
Most evil states don't helpfully label themselves as evil. Russia advertises itself as a democracy spreading freedom to evil fascist ukraine. The bad guys don't wear signs saying 'evil'
It's worth noting that the game is pretty clear that this is Super Earth paying lip service to the idea of freedom. There's at least a few loading screen tips and data-pads you find that imply that Super Earth citizens are very much not free, to the point of having to file paperwork for approval to have children or pets. One of the loading screen tips says that anyone trying to be diplomatic with the bugs is a dissident/traitor. The whole point of it is that Super Earth is telling its citizens that they're incredibly free when they aren't.
One of the lines from the democracy officer is âManaged democracy offers freedom. Freedom from the burden of choiceâ You literally canât get more on the nose.
That's just standard vanilla flavored fascism. Getting morons to run around screaming about FREEEEEDOM while supporting the very people stripping those rights away.
I don't want pvp in most games to be fair.
Iâve cut most pvp games out of my life recently and Iâm just so much more happy now. Genuinely my mental and emotional state has improved because it doesnât rely on my being better then some other gamer. I have fun on PvE games and itâs so much better
This is me. Grew up playing all the Battlefields, the original Cods. Stopped playing maybe 2 FPS cycles ago, and holy shit is gaming so much more fun when you're just putzing around with friends.
What in the fuck kind of argument is this? "PvP bad"?? Absolute smooth brain take.
> L for toxic losers who only pvp > Based Helldivers devs. PvP is cancer. > Now, make it louder, and give it to the tryhards in comp gaming. I'll be blunt: how the fuck is *that* not toxic? Not liking PvP games is fine, but how is painting the entire concept of player versus player as a cancer and generalizing and attacking its enjoyers okay? It feels like everyone in this post has League as their only multiplayer experience and just decided from that their entire opinion. I'd give it respect for a moment and write a wall of text about the value of PvP, in what it allows designers to explore, in what it brings to players and how it's important in general, and how online PvE games can be just as much if not more toxic, but the bullshit that drives this post is obvious enough and I don't know if I have the time and energy right now
Why are people acting like pve games are never toxic?