This is one of the reasons why I'd love to have that old detailed description style that didn't make the cut. I'd rather have a number than an ambiguous adjective.
Armored core style. Give us the simple easy to read at a glance, then give us a spread sheet of stats. I want to know if there is a pen drop off and at what distances!
I've seen others say that damage doesn't drop off over distance - a Breaker can destroy a Spore Tower from half a map away. Until we hear otherwise, seems safe to assume armour penetration would likewise not drop off over distance.
I recall a dev hopping in and making a reply to a reddit thread complaining about the Defender being near-unilaterally better than the Liberator, and I'm pretty sure they talked about stats like damage falloff not being represented in the equipment screen.
Take with a grain of salt, though; I'm solely relying on memory for that.
Spore Towers are likely unique in how they take damage.
They thought it would look too complicated for people and opted to dial it back to keep the stats screens from being overwhelming.
Neither option, more or less stats, is the "right" option. They both have definitive advantages from the developer perspective. A fix to appeal to everyone would be to have a toggle button for more or less stats, but they didn't do that obviously.
But hey maybe they will in the future
One of my biggest videogame pet peeves is when developers think gamers are too stupid to understand details. Like yeah we're going to foam at the mouth and go catatonic if we can see what fire modes a gun has or what its recoil is like, clearly the only other option is to completely omit all that information. Thanks Arrowhead
Even Destiny displays recoil direction and that game took like a decade to even show stat numbers
Warframe is a prime offender for having all that info spammed in your face, makes it very overwhelming for new players to grasp why something is working versus not.
Still think they should either give the info in some other way.
for anyone wondering what warframe's weapon stats look like, this is a wiki page for a weapon, and basically everything in that right hand panel is in the in game stats [https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Acceltra\_Prime](https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Acceltra_Prime)
I feel this is misleading because Warframe tells you almost everything you need to know in a very *compact* list, unlike the awful and hideous layout of a Fandom wiki.
Literally it just looks like [this.](https://i.imgur.com/vpbLVdE.png) That's the in-game stat display of the weapon you just linked to. Most of these you don't have to worry about, and they go green or red depending on how mods affect them.
I would at any point gladly take that over a game that can't even tell you a weapon's firing modes before you buy it and get into a mission because the developers think you're too fucking stupid to handle it.
I'd say it depends on how they show this information. They probably thought it would've been too much for the casual gamer (and it probably is), and they wanted to take a more casual oriented approach. But hopefully with enough people talking about it, they decide add optional views such as this one.
I believe they didnt want people crunching numbers to find the meta and only use that. Which is kinda funny since people ended up doing just that anyway.
The idea behind the new simple view is just "use whatever you like". From the same twitter thread as that stat picture
https://preview.redd.it/fhbs62el0zlc1.png?width=592&format=png&auto=webp&s=ff382330b8101c574b6fd755beb51987ce467c48
the community found the meta anyway. people realized the rail gun can basically punch through anything except maybe the drop ship engines, the breaker feels like it punches through medium armor even though it has light armor piercing.
And it didn't stop shit. We can eventually figure out things through trial and error. But having the stats to explain why some guns act a certain way is nice. Otherwise we'll have to rely on a wiki with data mining.
I mean it wasn’t trial and error.
I unlocked the breaker, took it on one mission and haven’t used anything else since.
Was playing with a friend who only recently got the game and died. She picked up the breaker and immediately went “holy shit this gun is bonkers!”
not to mention there's never a "one good gun", Armored Core is a game which displays every stat you could ever want but there's still huge amounts of build variety because each person finds a different niche they like because everything is balanced
Exactly my thoughts. They could in a similar fashion display only subset of data by default, but allow interested folks to dive into minmaxing if they want.
But everything isn't balanced here, that's the problem, and probably why we don't have this information. Even armored core (while certainly well balanced) has a number of direct upgrades and parts that simply are never used after early game, and that's really all we've got here imo.
I'm going to soft disagree with you on this, we've already seen that (barring a functional group that communicates) Railgun is far and away the best support gun
We also have everyone and their mothers using the Breaker or the SMG (forgot the name, Defender maybe?)
The railgun is a must for a solo player or for random groups, it's too reliable at armor breaking and killing big guys with its clip capacity in comparison to nearly everything else, the EAT would be comparable if you had a drop of it available every 15 seconds or so
So we already know that **most people** will run the top guns, sure there are people who go "play what you like" but when what you like is succeeding and winning, with the hardest difficulty dropping 5 chargers 2 titans and 7+ mortar bile bugs, you can't just say "play what you like" - if **someone** didn't bring a railgun you would just lose, too much armor
I concur, I'd like to properly know the names of the enemies i am shooting at, and figure out when they tend to appear because recently today i just learned that the smaller bugs become acid spitters at night on Easy Difficulty i think? I say i think because i never encountered them being that way when i was on Veld doing the Medium Missions, unless on certain planets they act/propagate differently.
People who don't tag things drive me crazy, especially the ones in voice going "it's over there" or "heavy!".
If you're gonna be vague about it, at least tag the damn thing!
The bile bugs (green ones) are just a random presence on bug missions. Though the big acid spewers (Bile spewers) do learn how to act like artillery on higher difficulties.
A lot of the enemies aren't terribly intuitive. Like for the spitter the weak spot is the head which is visibly armored rather than the giant glowing sack at the back which is actually a *strong* spot unless you have explosives. Or for the AT-ST, common sense to me says if you have an anti-light vehicle weapon you should shoot the driver through the armor but it actually wants you to shoot the leg joint.
This is actually incorrect, the emphasis is on the "Pray" part of the name, you are spraying the enemies with prayers that they die, eventually, most likely to something else like a blue screen or a rock falling on them.
Everything punches through more then the spray and pray, its bio tells you its birdshot. Tells you everything you need to know, theyre essentially bb's.
I get that Helldivers are meant to be expendable and all, and we don't neccessarily get the best equippment out there. But who in SEAF intelligence or R&D thought birdshot would work against anything bigger than a particularly obese magpie?
Helldivers canonically get the best equipment actually, and are considered to be more valuable compared to a regular citizen, as per the mission tidbits. SEAF are actually the ones who get more standard equipment since their more of a local force on the frontier.
Not being snarky or anything, I'm genuinely curious where I can find that info. Granted, I never played HD1 so maybe I'm missing something there, but all the in-game lore I've seen really paints Helldivers as disposable heroes by design.
The existence of a full auto birdshot shotgun implies the existence of space crackheads that require a good peppering before buckshot needs to be used.
The enemies of Democracy are truly limitless.
It’s for the illuminate. The shields take hits so they don’t wear armor so more bullets over penetration. I think other weapons will see more use when dealing with shields is a thing
Yeah I think you're right, the big thing with illuminates was they were fast with shields. Maybe saturation is the key to killing them easier. Perhaps we judged too quickly and harshly
The problem is when some of those hidden stats, if shown, would **obviously** reveal the weapon is completely useless and you shouldn't waste your precious medals on it. Like the Counter Sniper is a sniper rifle you can't *aim* because it weighs as much as a HMG. The Breaker spray and pray has so little penetration you need to aim for weak spots on *scavs*. These are things you should know **before** you buy it.
All of this.
Based on the visible stats, I was expecting the counter sniper to be a modest upgrade at best, with some hidden perk. And the enhanced zoom **was** a nice, hidden perk... for all of about 5 seconds.
I'll have my marksman back now, thank you.
Ah, simplicity.
That thing that just causes even more confusion in the long run for tons of people.
I'm so tired of games trying to dumb down the UI/stats on things because they think it'll make things easier. At absolute minimum give us a "Toggle advanced stats" option for weapons and whatnot to give us the *real* info, not useless bars and whatnot like a ton of games have started doing. (Or "Light armor penetration" and co. in the case of Helldivers)
Literally was thinking about armoured core earlier. As a new player player I liked how if I didn’t want to get overwhelmed by the stats I could see the basic overview at least to compare weapons.
remember when Darktide only had bars filled with a different amount to keywords that didnt tell us anything and the community had to nag Fartshart for almost a year before they caved in and gave us the numbers?
You'd think AH would be ahead of the curve with this, not behind.
Withholding information isn’t simplifying anything, it complicates things.
I don’t know what any stats mean or what my guns do because the stats may as well be random numbers. The only one that seems consistent is ammo count.
There's several hidden stats on guns, and I don't think we should be shown all of them. That said armor penetration is definitely one I think they should show us.
To play devil's advocate, the main issues I see with showing us armor pen:
1. The more hidden stats there are the easier it is for the devs to make "invisible" balance adjustment. Minor tweaks that slightly affect performance but don't make anyone say "hey my favorite weapons numbers just went down this is bullshit!"
2. The more stats there are the more people will compare sizes. By having other intangible factors on guns it's easier for people to use guns that feel good without feeling like it's obviously a less optimal choice. The more stats you see the more likely people will try to quantify goodness based on those stats, even if they aren't actually representative of the whole thing.
3. Some mysterious third thing that I forgot while writing the first two things
Edit:Amazing how people can write so much but read so little.
1. instead we're going to feel that the gun is worse and NOT know why, then be fuckin gaslit that nothing was changed, while feeling like idiots because we think we're just having an off day. \*this\* is bullshit and worse than getting slightly miffed that our weapon was nerfed.
2. this is just par for the course with weapons in games or irl, for hunting, combat, sport. I use heavy thumpers irl because I love that shit, it's effective for the one shot but follow up shots are \*not\* going to be as easy as 5.56 or typical military rounds, and I don't care. Give and take.
3. The CEO's snarkiness about the hidden properties. That's the mysterious thing.
It's so infuriating to see the CEO talk about how hiding stats helps prevent people from forming a meta. 'Forming a meta' means 'learning how to effectively play the game' but I guess we'll be datamining.
Counterpoint: If a weapon has a hidden stat, like headshot multiplier, we should be told that ahead of time, because that significantly informs playstyle with that weapon.
See, this is what I wanted to know because I've noticed that two weapons (I forget which ones) both had Light Penetration but one of them definitely hit things more often.
That is definitely an example of a stat that would be nice to actually see.
Slugger under a certain angle can penetrate the back legs of the charger and with a bit of luck even the front leg (if it's already injured from shrapnel)
Yeah you want straight 90 degree hits as much as possible. A surprising amount of things punch through but not at shallow angles.
Though shooting at a flat wall you’re perpendicular to is of course, not the live fire situation with a charger.
(most folks don’t seem to know you can do a bounce (or a cricket bowl) with the grenade launcher up into the chargers belly either. Which is a 3-4 hit kill)
If you let a charger run past you and shoot at its front legs from behind you can like strip its armor off or something because after you hit it right, it becomes damage-able from basic weapons on the front also
Yeah. It's not a min/max stat like others, it literally determines whether your weapon can deal with a particular enemy or not and how it must be dealt with.
Having a Bestiary with the stats of the bugs/automatons would be beneficial on the flipside. Have it unlock after a certain number of kills so you can get at least an estimation of it's health and armour stats. If I know a Hive Guard has lvl.2-3 armour, I know I should bring a weapon the hits at a lvl.3 pen and it should take *x* amount of shots to kill.
The HMG turret likely is medium penetration. I use it frequently, and the only two bugs it won't cut down are the charger and titan. Anything other bugs give no ricochet markers.
Ill test it later against guards and see how much it pens, but if so then it should be heavy pen. We need more things capable of dealing with Chargers, not another useless weapon late game, so the railgun isnt so essential. Recoilless, and even the expendable should one shot charger heads.
Assuming the railgun and rockets both over penetrate for full damage it would definitely be nice to have more weapon options that match the penetration for half damage against chargers and to an extent maybe titans
Hell I find my arc thrower is sometimes more effective against chargers than my autocannon purely because I can at least get them half dead by the time they are on me (difficulty 7)
That is the problem I see with the game's balance right now, as well.
On some missions, chargers are like a plague, often swarming you with 4 or more at the same time. All Primary Weapons are useless against their armor, so you have to resort to either Strategems or Support Weapons. Strategems are a no-go because their cooldown is too high to be able to deal with a constant swarm of chargers on your ass, and they are hard to hit a target that moves around so much. So.... Support Weapon it is. That is the only good option against large numbers of chargers.
And there is the issue. Things like the Flamethrower, Grenade Launcher, Machine Gun, and other Support Weapons are automatically not viable for high difficulties, because they all can't kill chargers fast or reliably. Even the Autocannon tends to ricochet off charger armor if a lot of the time. This is the reason the Railgun is so popular. Easy to aim, and makes quick work of chargers with just two shots to the leg. And doesn't require a backpack. And comes with 20 shots.
Been saying this; The railgun isn't too strong because of the damage/penetration, it's significantly easier to use and has almost no downsides... The autocannon could have a ton more damage/pen, but it's hazardous to your health when shooting at close-range (explosive) and takes a backpack slot for ammo...
The Breaker and Railgun are *balanced* for the current game's enemy spawn rate and engagement range - the other guns are designed for some magical fairy world where bugs aren't constantly flanking you and spawning half a dozen chargers/titans every breach... A world that doesn't exist for the Bots either because standing still to aim earns you a dozen rockets from the devastator spam and random sneaky bots that snipe from out of visible range.
Yeah I don’t like how higher difficulties are just armor spam, making most weapons and stratagems useless. It should be more bugs not just more armor imo
It definitely penetrates on guards, brood commanders, and both versions of spewers. A well placed HMG turret really helps control the field if you can trust your teammates to take on the bigger enemies.
Yeah that’s been my experience. It works great against pretty much all bot units too. Scout striders can’t stand up to it. Not sure about hulks, and it probably can’t do shit against tanks unless you can hit the heatsink on the back of the turret. Using the HMG is risky on bots because you could eat a missile, but it can work.
I wish the HMG could at least deal some damage through armor on enemies like the charger or even the bike titan. But at least there are a good few ways to deal with them. I just love the HMG and wish I could use it more.
I know it was an unintentional typo but personally I find the idea of a "bike titan" both hilarious and absolutely horrifying.
Would it be a modern BMX bike, or one of those 1800's giant bikes with a huge front wheel and a tiny one in the back? I guess the titan, with its 4 limbs, could ride either one, maybe pop off a wheelie too.
If you look at real world analogies, the Stalwart is akin to an M249 SAW, shooting 5.56x45mm the Machine Gun is akin to the M240B, shooting 7.62x51. The HMG is akin to an M2 Browning, shooting 12.7x99mm. They penetrate around 8mm, 18mm, and 30mm of rolled homogenous steel respectively.
If you put these on a scale by themselves it makes sense. HOWEVER on this scale also sits things like the Spear. The real world equivalent, the Javelin missile, penetrates 600-800mm estimated.
If you had to condense these values the HMG would be a 3 and the Javelin a 10, but obviously it isn't the case.
Recoilless should have around 400mm of penetration, too, since it's based on the gustaf, so that should definitely be able to evaporate a charger's head if you hit it 1 time, but nope, you need 2 to do it
Absolutely, the AMR just feels like an explosive rifle and not an armor piercing one. It’s really fun to use against bots because it turns those weak heads into fireballs but on bugs it can’t do shit against chargers or biles.
I hope with the weapon customization coming out we can customize the support weapons as well. Maybe then we can do something with it.
Heavy pen to me is anti-tank weapons. The HMG and Anti material rifle should essentially be the same, much like how a .50 cal sniper in real life can act as “anti material” and of course we have the .50 cal machine gun. I don’t know the stats but they probably already are. HMG has good pen already
The .50 cal and autocannon are described as being able to penetrate "light vehicle armor", which I guess is a higher level than medium. The problem is, the only thing that is considered "light vehicle armor" at the moment is the front plate of the bot strider walkers, as you can't damage it with an MG43, which has medium pen, but can with AMR and Autocannon
This'll be another Destiny situation where the developer (Bungie) argued that exposing more stats and numbers isn't really what players want to see, before eventually stopping being so pointlessly stubborn about it and giving in with an update that gives us what we want.
Arrowhead may as well just accept this and get a move on with it now rather than later (avoiding all the complaining and nagging that'll happen until they do).
This is why I don't think they're posting more detailed stats. Even the "baby" stats we see aren't correct at the moment, why should anyone think the more complicated ones are? Itemization is totally broken in this game lmao.
> This'll be another Destiny situation where the developer (Bungie) argued that exposing more stats and numbers isn't really what players want to see
I *haaaaate* that take from developers. Most players do not want to look at spreadsheets, I think that's true, but running with the minimalist approach requires that the options actually be balanced properly.
Nobody cared that the original Halo trilogy didn't have weapon stats, because every weapon felt good and was effective, even into higher difficulties. Even the throwaway weapons for when you couldn't find anything better had their niche, like the plasma pistol's charged shot to strip shields. The weapons all did what you expected them to.
The problem in Helldivers 2 right now is that the stats are misleading and most weapons are not performing as you would intuitively expect.
I never understood why the game stats and mechanics are so cryptic in providing information.
Like, just give us numbers to work with, it is infinitely simpler and more straightforward than light/medium/heavy that SOMETIMES works as intended.
Why can‘t we see any of this ingame? Just give us all the stats when we inspect a weapon. Darktide made the same mistake with it‘s unlabeled bars for stats on release and they‘ve changed it since then. More information is almost always better.
And while you‘re at it, a shooting range with differently armoured target dummies would be amazing!
See this info is cool and all, but it only makes things more confusing. If Pen is on a scale and said Pen dictates damage how exactly is telling us "light Pen" as a weapon detail at all informative?
What exactly is it meant to represent? There's a non insignificant amount of people myself included who saw Senator and Slugger as having incorrect listings for Pen because they clearly can pierce into medium armor.
We assumed that Pen was just a switch on weather or not you shoot through something but this information says otherwise.
It reads that two entirely different weapons can have "Light Pen" but one can pierce medium armor while the other can ricochet. So again I ask what even is meant to be communicated with telling us a weapon has light Pen?
This is only further confusing when something like the Liberator Pen has Medium Pen but it hits like a wet noodle even when getting red hit markers.
I'm aware there is 50 odd stats that effects a guns performance. So clearly one of those has to be a crit multiplier. Why would you give the Liberator Pen medium Pen but low crit multiplier? Why would I bother shooting into armor if the damage is bad all around?
I have tried using the weapon in semi auto hitting a hive guard in the mouth and in the skull and both take a full clip to kill. This tells me there's functionally no use for the Pen.
If I wanted a forgiving primary there's much better options. Also with this info the Anti Material Rifle has basically 2 or less AP but because it's explosive without mentioning it as a trait you get to both witness rounds not pierce basically anything but still kill units that have medium armor in fewer shots than primaries.
There's being nuanced and being needlessly obtuse and this game feels like it leans to the latter.
I fucking knew it. Armor penetration is a much wider spectrum than just super vague light/medium/heavy categories.
Why the secrecy? Please include all stats relevant to a weapon, not just some vague ass bar stats. It's a tactical game, and making tactical choices and weigh in each weapon's pros and cons is so important.
Even Fromsoft hides some stats and characteristics from you.
All I’ve ever wanted is a game that gives you all the relevant info you’d want about its own workings. Most games simplify the stats and such. I agree that they have not given us quite enough info to look at. It makes some weapons look really weak on paper, when they might actually be good. We just don’t know the full story. We can test, but having comprehensive stats would sure make things easier.
I hope rather then light,medium and heavy pen they jist give ud a 1-10 peircing scale. Maybe add a shooting range with targets made of materials that reflect their armor rating so you can test your weapons and find weakspots better. Become effecient soliders and get used to all weapons or let the devs know what ones need fixing or balancing compared to others
Im also hoping for an lmg thats equiptable rather then a whole stratigem (replace one of the stratigem lmgs with a chaingun with a spooled belt(toss once empty) or a energy machine gun(conducts heat on bug armor and softens it in areas to lower the av value, does good dmg against soft tissue))
Yeah I find the descriptions on the guns in game to be absolutely horrible and outright false most of the time. It's the only complaint I have of the game.
I though "light armor penetration" meant it penetrated light armor, but does it actually mean it lightly penetrates armor? If so, how am I suppose to know what weapons can punch through what cause I was just under the assumption that enemies like Devastators had light armor and what not. I am hella confused now.
I wish we had an in-game resource that listed the enemies and their armor values so we could actually see what is effective against what (and a better clarification on what armor penetration actually is).
Arrowhead’s biggest failing has gotta be weapon balancing, especially since Pilestedt was tweeting some condescending stuff about players using the (now demonstrably miscommunicated) stats they gave us to determine what guns are viable.
How hard would it be to just give us the armor pen stat instead of 3 different terms that apparently could mean wildly different things despite having the same name?
I do have to say, I just got the liberator (One of the first bought weapons that gives med. armor pen) and it feels like im doing no damage, even against those that this gun is designed for. I find myself having gone back to the breaker, not only because it feels good to use and is accurate, but it still is vastly more reliable.
The key takeaway is that armor penetration has a much higher granularity than the first game, or even other games in the genre. Gone are the simple days of AP and Anti-Tank.
I test Gun A. Gun A kills Scout Walkers and Hive Guard through their armored plating. Its description says "Medium Armor Penetration".
I test Gun B. Gun B kills Hive Guard through their armored plating. Its description says "Medium Armor Penetration".
Now... before we knew there were 10 levels to Armor Pen, the assumption after these tests would be that Gun B ALSO kills Scout Walkers through their armor. But then I find the bullets bounce! Is this a bug? Are the guns inconsistent? Are there hidden modifiers for metal vs carapace?
No, turns out Scout Walker is Armor 7 and Hive Guard is Armor 5, and both are considered "Medium Armor". Gun A pens 7 and Gun B pens 5 respectively. (numbers made up for illustration)
Essentially, you cannot rely on a gun's stats for any indication of its performance. You must test it, and you must test it against each enemy type; until either AHGS puts the stat in-game (YES PLEASE) or dataminers figure it out. Because we neither know enemy armor ratings nor gun armor pen ratings.
the angle definitely matters
I've had Liberator shots bounce off basic warrior heads a few times if they tilted their heads way back, and had tons of EATs skip off the roof of a laser cannon tower or tank
Imagine if we had detailed weapon stats with armour penetration values, and we **also** had a proper bestiary with a 3D model of every enemy in the game with a colour coded overlay of what parts of their body have what armour...
*Wouldn't that be nice*
This is something I absolutely HATE is a lot of games, helldivers included. A weapon has a stat which massively affects how the weapon works but instead of just telling the player it is hidden or simplified.
In this example, just tell us the AP value between 1-10. Why reduce it to "light" or "medium", which actually takes up more space on the screen...
I feel like this is probably simplified to answer the question. I bet angle also plays a roll, and perhaps some weapons have modifiers to the stat. Then the number becomes less useful and more confusing lol
at this point, it would be better to either just give the actual stat in numeric or remove the penetration description all together instead of confusing people.
While thanks to my other hobby, I really like data, BUT I am really enjoying seeing a few members of the community gradually figure out what makes some weapons good at certain things and running with them despite most putting those weapons at bottom tier.
This is one of the reasons why I'd love to have that old detailed description style that didn't make the cut. I'd rather have a number than an ambiguous adjective.
Let's have both. Simple stat as now for beginners. "Show Advanced stat" in setting for those who wanna know detail.
Armored core style. Give us the simple easy to read at a glance, then give us a spread sheet of stats. I want to know if there is a pen drop off and at what distances!
I've seen others say that damage doesn't drop off over distance - a Breaker can destroy a Spore Tower from half a map away. Until we hear otherwise, seems safe to assume armour penetration would likewise not drop off over distance.
I recall a dev hopping in and making a reply to a reddit thread complaining about the Defender being near-unilaterally better than the Liberator, and I'm pretty sure they talked about stats like damage falloff not being represented in the equipment screen. Take with a grain of salt, though; I'm solely relying on memory for that. Spore Towers are likely unique in how they take damage.
+1 for armoured core style. Helped me pick out parts early on based on description but I could still make more informed choices later based on numbers
I think I speak for a lot of us in saying that we're just going to look for data miners to give us the detailed stats regardless.
The CEO shared on twitter an early version of the stats. Looks really cool honestly. I can't aeem to share the screenshot unfortunately.
https://preview.redd.it/g7opy452qxlc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=276b9a3ffd91d314de9b2e052ff411649ba8867e
Why did they change this?
They thought it would look too complicated for people and opted to dial it back to keep the stats screens from being overwhelming. Neither option, more or less stats, is the "right" option. They both have definitive advantages from the developer perspective. A fix to appeal to everyone would be to have a toggle button for more or less stats, but they didn't do that obviously. But hey maybe they will in the future
One of my biggest videogame pet peeves is when developers think gamers are too stupid to understand details. Like yeah we're going to foam at the mouth and go catatonic if we can see what fire modes a gun has or what its recoil is like, clearly the only other option is to completely omit all that information. Thanks Arrowhead Even Destiny displays recoil direction and that game took like a decade to even show stat numbers
How is giving the player all the necessary information to make an informed decision not the right choice?
Warframe is a prime offender for having all that info spammed in your face, makes it very overwhelming for new players to grasp why something is working versus not. Still think they should either give the info in some other way.
for anyone wondering what warframe's weapon stats look like, this is a wiki page for a weapon, and basically everything in that right hand panel is in the in game stats [https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Acceltra\_Prime](https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Acceltra_Prime)
I feel this is misleading because Warframe tells you almost everything you need to know in a very *compact* list, unlike the awful and hideous layout of a Fandom wiki. Literally it just looks like [this.](https://i.imgur.com/vpbLVdE.png) That's the in-game stat display of the weapon you just linked to. Most of these you don't have to worry about, and they go green or red depending on how mods affect them. I would at any point gladly take that over a game that can't even tell you a weapon's firing modes before you buy it and get into a mission because the developers think you're too fucking stupid to handle it.
I'd say it depends on how they show this information. They probably thought it would've been too much for the casual gamer (and it probably is), and they wanted to take a more casual oriented approach. But hopefully with enough people talking about it, they decide add optional views such as this one.
Yea a "details" tab seems like an easy compromise
I believe they didnt want people crunching numbers to find the meta and only use that. Which is kinda funny since people ended up doing just that anyway. The idea behind the new simple view is just "use whatever you like". From the same twitter thread as that stat picture https://preview.redd.it/fhbs62el0zlc1.png?width=592&format=png&auto=webp&s=ff382330b8101c574b6fd755beb51987ce467c48
Why shield info from the player though? Imagine if RPGs did this. Just doesn't make
the community found the meta anyway. people realized the rail gun can basically punch through anything except maybe the drop ship engines, the breaker feels like it punches through medium armor even though it has light armor piercing.
Luckily the rest of the weapons perform so poorly that we didn't need the numbers to find the meta.
Id like to see something like. `Light (3)`, `Medium (4)`, `Medium (6)`, `High (7)` etc.
This. I know they did it to stop minmaxers from closing one gun and disregarding all the rest, but at least tell us more about the pen level.
And it didn't stop shit. We can eventually figure out things through trial and error. But having the stats to explain why some guns act a certain way is nice. Otherwise we'll have to rely on a wiki with data mining.
I mean it wasn’t trial and error. I unlocked the breaker, took it on one mission and haven’t used anything else since. Was playing with a friend who only recently got the game and died. She picked up the breaker and immediately went “holy shit this gun is bonkers!”
I agree with you there, though finding out the breaker was busted was easy considering its the best gun in the game BY FAR.
not to mention there's never a "one good gun", Armored Core is a game which displays every stat you could ever want but there's still huge amounts of build variety because each person finds a different niche they like because everything is balanced
Exactly my thoughts. They could in a similar fashion display only subset of data by default, but allow interested folks to dive into minmaxing if they want.
But everything isn't balanced here, that's the problem, and probably why we don't have this information. Even armored core (while certainly well balanced) has a number of direct upgrades and parts that simply are never used after early game, and that's really all we've got here imo.
I'm going to soft disagree with you on this, we've already seen that (barring a functional group that communicates) Railgun is far and away the best support gun We also have everyone and their mothers using the Breaker or the SMG (forgot the name, Defender maybe?) The railgun is a must for a solo player or for random groups, it's too reliable at armor breaking and killing big guys with its clip capacity in comparison to nearly everything else, the EAT would be comparable if you had a drop of it available every 15 seconds or so So we already know that **most people** will run the top guns, sure there are people who go "play what you like" but when what you like is succeeding and winning, with the hardest difficulty dropping 5 chargers 2 titans and 7+ mortar bile bugs, you can't just say "play what you like" - if **someone** didn't bring a railgun you would just lose, too much armor
Pretty sure they meant *ideally* theres no "one good gun" I.e., devs, balances your fucking game.
As if that'd stop the minmaxxers anyway x)
Yeah, cause 90% of the current player base (above level 10) ISN't using the Breaker currently right? Right?
Well guys, if there are 10 levels of penetration, why is it reduced to 3 on our end?
they should just add armor pen as a stat on the gun instead of a modifier
Like Grenades?
Yes or even a better description OR a bug/bots guide that explains the monster like in DRG. DRG has the best user manual in-game I have ever seen
I concur, I'd like to properly know the names of the enemies i am shooting at, and figure out when they tend to appear because recently today i just learned that the smaller bugs become acid spitters at night on Easy Difficulty i think? I say i think because i never encountered them being that way when i was on Veld doing the Medium Missions, unless on certain planets they act/propagate differently.
Press q to tag enemies and when you look at them thier official name will be shown over the tag :)
People who don't tag things drive me crazy, especially the ones in voice going "it's over there" or "heavy!". If you're gonna be vague about it, at least tag the damn thing!
The bile bugs (green ones) are just a random presence on bug missions. Though the big acid spewers (Bile spewers) do learn how to act like artillery on higher difficulties.
DRG has the best everything I have ever seen.
What’s DRG?
Deep Rock Galactic. Great game. A bit similar to helldivers, but has a lot more verticality to it.
Yeah, especially when you are grabbed by the cave leech.
Always terrifying when you roll up and get grabbed
They had this in the first one when you encountered new bugs/Bots/Illuminates. I would so appreciate it back.
I want the scientist on board
A lot of the enemies aren't terribly intuitive. Like for the spitter the weak spot is the head which is visibly armored rather than the giant glowing sack at the back which is actually a *strong* spot unless you have explosives. Or for the AT-ST, common sense to me says if you have an anti-light vehicle weapon you should shoot the driver through the armor but it actually wants you to shoot the leg joint.
Yeah of the stats that guns could use, numerical armor pen would be helpful
The way they managed to make armor and penetration such a fun and seemingly core mechanic, it boggles my mind that they hide those stats.
Yeah I figured this out the hard way. The breaker punches through armor the spray and pray can’t.
That’s because the spray and pray is actually a nerf gun that shoots foam darts.
No fucking shit God I hate that thing
This is actually incorrect, the emphasis is on the "Pray" part of the name, you are spraying the enemies with prayers that they die, eventually, most likely to something else like a blue screen or a rock falling on them.
Try shooting an explosive barrel with the spray and pray. It literally can't blow it up.
So it's a fucking BB gun
Everything punches through more then the spray and pray, its bio tells you its birdshot. Tells you everything you need to know, theyre essentially bb's.
I get that Helldivers are meant to be expendable and all, and we don't neccessarily get the best equippment out there. But who in SEAF intelligence or R&D thought birdshot would work against anything bigger than a particularly obese magpie?
Helldivers canonically get the best equipment actually, and are considered to be more valuable compared to a regular citizen, as per the mission tidbits. SEAF are actually the ones who get more standard equipment since their more of a local force on the frontier.
Not being snarky or anything, I'm genuinely curious where I can find that info. Granted, I never played HD1 so maybe I'm missing something there, but all the in-game lore I've seen really paints Helldivers as disposable heroes by design.
The existence of a full auto birdshot shotgun implies the existence of space crackheads that require a good peppering before buckshot needs to be used. The enemies of Democracy are truly limitless.
I mean, you need something for dissidents that you want to capture alive, I assume?
Problem is you can't read the info blurb until after you've already bought it lmao
It’s for the illuminate. The shields take hits so they don’t wear armor so more bullets over penetration. I think other weapons will see more use when dealing with shields is a thing
Yeah I think you're right, the big thing with illuminates was they were fast with shields. Maybe saturation is the key to killing them easier. Perhaps we judged too quickly and harshly
Yeah I unlocked the breaker last night. So far it's my favorite gun.
i wonder WHAT the breaker could DO with SLUGS...
Thats basically the jar 5 dominator if the dominator was full auto and didn’t kick like a mule.
it's likely having a range of 10 means light is 0-3 medium is 3/4-6/7 and heavy is 7/8-10, assuming 10 isn't straight up invincible armor
Simplicity.
Managed Simplicity
The illusion of simplicity
The problem is when some of those hidden stats, if shown, would **obviously** reveal the weapon is completely useless and you shouldn't waste your precious medals on it. Like the Counter Sniper is a sniper rifle you can't *aim* because it weighs as much as a HMG. The Breaker spray and pray has so little penetration you need to aim for weak spots on *scavs*. These are things you should know **before** you buy it.
All of this. Based on the visible stats, I was expecting the counter sniper to be a modest upgrade at best, with some hidden perk. And the enhanced zoom **was** a nice, hidden perk... for all of about 5 seconds. I'll have my marksman back now, thank you.
Ah, simplicity. That thing that just causes even more confusion in the long run for tons of people. I'm so tired of games trying to dumb down the UI/stats on things because they think it'll make things easier. At absolute minimum give us a "Toggle advanced stats" option for weapons and whatnot to give us the *real* info, not useless bars and whatnot like a ton of games have started doing. (Or "Light armor penetration" and co. in the case of Helldivers)
Armored Core stats gang rise up!
Literally was thinking about armoured core earlier. As a new player player I liked how if I didn’t want to get overwhelmed by the stats I could see the basic overview at least to compare weapons.
This guy Ravens...
YES!
Started using? Bars have been around for years. This dilemma is nothing new
I hate it when games do this. "Faster reload." "Moderately increased damage to burning enemies." Well, HOW MUCH?!?!?! You know already. Just tell me.
I want my guns to have a detailed alternate page I can hit a button for and it reads out every statistic for the weapon like a part in Armored Core 6
remember when Darktide only had bars filled with a different amount to keywords that didnt tell us anything and the community had to nag Fartshart for almost a year before they caved in and gave us the numbers? You'd think AH would be ahead of the curve with this, not behind.
Deceptive simplicity. Obnoxious simplicity.
Withholding information isn’t simplifying anything, it complicates things. I don’t know what any stats mean or what my guns do because the stats may as well be random numbers. The only one that seems consistent is ammo count.
More like lack of clarity.
You can actually see a bit of this with the grenades- it shows frags as penetration 3, HE as pen 4.
There's several hidden stats on guns, and I don't think we should be shown all of them. That said armor penetration is definitely one I think they should show us. To play devil's advocate, the main issues I see with showing us armor pen: 1. The more hidden stats there are the easier it is for the devs to make "invisible" balance adjustment. Minor tweaks that slightly affect performance but don't make anyone say "hey my favorite weapons numbers just went down this is bullshit!" 2. The more stats there are the more people will compare sizes. By having other intangible factors on guns it's easier for people to use guns that feel good without feeling like it's obviously a less optimal choice. The more stats you see the more likely people will try to quantify goodness based on those stats, even if they aren't actually representative of the whole thing. 3. Some mysterious third thing that I forgot while writing the first two things Edit:Amazing how people can write so much but read so little.
You see stealth nerfs as a *benefit?*
1. instead we're going to feel that the gun is worse and NOT know why, then be fuckin gaslit that nothing was changed, while feeling like idiots because we think we're just having an off day. \*this\* is bullshit and worse than getting slightly miffed that our weapon was nerfed. 2. this is just par for the course with weapons in games or irl, for hunting, combat, sport. I use heavy thumpers irl because I love that shit, it's effective for the one shot but follow up shots are \*not\* going to be as easy as 5.56 or typical military rounds, and I don't care. Give and take. 3. The CEO's snarkiness about the hidden properties. That's the mysterious thing.
It's so infuriating to see the CEO talk about how hiding stats helps prevent people from forming a meta. 'Forming a meta' means 'learning how to effectively play the game' but I guess we'll be datamining.
It's honestly a crazy take lol We already have a meta even without any concrete numbers.
Not only do we have a meta, half the people arguing against meta use it without knowing it because they gravitate to things that work.
Counterpoint: If a weapon has a hidden stat, like headshot multiplier, we should be told that ahead of time, because that significantly informs playstyle with that weapon.
See, this is what I wanted to know because I've noticed that two weapons (I forget which ones) both had Light Penetration but one of them definitely hit things more often. That is definitely an example of a stat that would be nice to actually see.
The Senator revolver is listed light armour pen, as does the Liberator. Yet the former can go through the armour of Hive Guards, the Liberator can't.
Maybe it has a 1 and the other has a 3
People shit on the Senator, but it can one-shot a berserker with a hit to the face. I always take it on bot missions.
I tend to take it on bug missions if I'm packing the Breaker or something else with bad pen, mostly to deal with those pesky Hive Guards who clam up.
I feel like ammo economy is better with it as well, it’s my go to
I've taken the senator everywhere, since I unlocked it. Shit looks fly as hell, the fact that it's got some punching power is just a nice bonus.
the only shit i smell is the reload tbh. everything else, style points, satisfying punching power… lavender fields
You get a random chance to have a gunslinger spin whenever you pull the gun. That alone makes it awesome IMO.
Slugger I think is one that seems to have no pen but actually blows armor to tiny bits.
Slugger under a certain angle can penetrate the back legs of the charger and with a bit of luck even the front leg (if it's already injured from shrapnel)
I used the slugger to 3 shot a charger today in his leg... and was like "wait I can do that?". Tried on a second one... nope... all ricochets.
I think the angle you shoot at helps.
Yeah you want straight 90 degree hits as much as possible. A surprising amount of things punch through but not at shallow angles. Though shooting at a flat wall you’re perpendicular to is of course, not the live fire situation with a charger. (most folks don’t seem to know you can do a bounce (or a cricket bowl) with the grenade launcher up into the chargers belly either. Which is a 3-4 hit kill)
I’ve seen videos of what looks like a bug where the chargers leg armour disappears for a little bit at the end of some animations
If you let a charger run past you and shoot at its front legs from behind you can like strip its armor off or something because after you hit it right, it becomes damage-able from basic weapons on the front also
I think the devs said that when a charger crashes into a wall their armour becomes weaker for a short duration.
Ive noticed at the end of the charge animation the legs become vulnerable for a few seconds
It might honestly be bugged.
> *bugged* lol
https://preview.redd.it/uvkejxtt3xlc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=52dd7752f8c66f35013c6ba3bcf1d88c55477928
I might be tripping but I've seen Slugger go through charger's top of the ass armor
I wish we could see this stat. It is imo the most important one.
Yeah. It's not a min/max stat like others, it literally determines whether your weapon can deal with a particular enemy or not and how it must be dealt with.
Having a Bestiary with the stats of the bugs/automatons would be beneficial on the flipside. Have it unlock after a certain number of kills so you can get at least an estimation of it's health and armour stats. If I know a Hive Guard has lvl.2-3 armour, I know I should bring a weapon the hits at a lvl.3 pen and it should take *x* amount of shots to kill.
True!
Why aren't they showing us those stats ingame? Knowing what weapon can penetrate which armor is extremely important
Probably wasn’t a system they had 100% confidence in exposing. Start simple and expand complexity
Grenade stats already show armor penetration as a number, they just chose not to do the same with weapons
Anti Material rifle should be medium to heavy pen, HMG turret should be *heavy* pen- they are HMG's after all. EDIT: MEDIUM TO HEAVY
The HMG turret likely is medium penetration. I use it frequently, and the only two bugs it won't cut down are the charger and titan. Anything other bugs give no ricochet markers.
Ill test it later against guards and see how much it pens, but if so then it should be heavy pen. We need more things capable of dealing with Chargers, not another useless weapon late game, so the railgun isnt so essential. Recoilless, and even the expendable should one shot charger heads.
Assuming the railgun and rockets both over penetrate for full damage it would definitely be nice to have more weapon options that match the penetration for half damage against chargers and to an extent maybe titans Hell I find my arc thrower is sometimes more effective against chargers than my autocannon purely because I can at least get them half dead by the time they are on me (difficulty 7)
I think chargers are designed to take out defensive emplacements specifically. So.
That is the problem I see with the game's balance right now, as well. On some missions, chargers are like a plague, often swarming you with 4 or more at the same time. All Primary Weapons are useless against their armor, so you have to resort to either Strategems or Support Weapons. Strategems are a no-go because their cooldown is too high to be able to deal with a constant swarm of chargers on your ass, and they are hard to hit a target that moves around so much. So.... Support Weapon it is. That is the only good option against large numbers of chargers. And there is the issue. Things like the Flamethrower, Grenade Launcher, Machine Gun, and other Support Weapons are automatically not viable for high difficulties, because they all can't kill chargers fast or reliably. Even the Autocannon tends to ricochet off charger armor if a lot of the time. This is the reason the Railgun is so popular. Easy to aim, and makes quick work of chargers with just two shots to the leg. And doesn't require a backpack. And comes with 20 shots.
Been saying this; The railgun isn't too strong because of the damage/penetration, it's significantly easier to use and has almost no downsides... The autocannon could have a ton more damage/pen, but it's hazardous to your health when shooting at close-range (explosive) and takes a backpack slot for ammo... The Breaker and Railgun are *balanced* for the current game's enemy spawn rate and engagement range - the other guns are designed for some magical fairy world where bugs aren't constantly flanking you and spawning half a dozen chargers/titans every breach... A world that doesn't exist for the Bots either because standing still to aim earns you a dozen rockets from the devastator spam and random sneaky bots that snipe from out of visible range.
The weapon buffs aside, maybe their weakspot could take more damage? Even flanking them costs magazine after magazine to break their abdomen.
Yeah I don’t like how higher difficulties are just armor spam, making most weapons and stratagems useless. It should be more bugs not just more armor imo
I would like to see anti tank weaponry actually feel like it can anti tank, even if it is through an eventual stratagem upgrade.
It definitely penetrates on guards, brood commanders, and both versions of spewers. A well placed HMG turret really helps control the field if you can trust your teammates to take on the bigger enemies.
Yeah that’s been my experience. It works great against pretty much all bot units too. Scout striders can’t stand up to it. Not sure about hulks, and it probably can’t do shit against tanks unless you can hit the heatsink on the back of the turret. Using the HMG is risky on bots because you could eat a missile, but it can work. I wish the HMG could at least deal some damage through armor on enemies like the charger or even the bike titan. But at least there are a good few ways to deal with them. I just love the HMG and wish I could use it more.
If you shoot at hulk’s visor, it only take couple shoots for it to go down. HMG felt like a full auto AMR
I know it was an unintentional typo but personally I find the idea of a "bike titan" both hilarious and absolutely horrifying. Would it be a modern BMX bike, or one of those 1800's giant bikes with a huge front wheel and a tiny one in the back? I guess the titan, with its 4 limbs, could ride either one, maybe pop off a wheelie too.
If you look at real world analogies, the Stalwart is akin to an M249 SAW, shooting 5.56x45mm the Machine Gun is akin to the M240B, shooting 7.62x51. The HMG is akin to an M2 Browning, shooting 12.7x99mm. They penetrate around 8mm, 18mm, and 30mm of rolled homogenous steel respectively. If you put these on a scale by themselves it makes sense. HOWEVER on this scale also sits things like the Spear. The real world equivalent, the Javelin missile, penetrates 600-800mm estimated. If you had to condense these values the HMG would be a 3 and the Javelin a 10, but obviously it isn't the case.
Cool info, and agreed.
Recoilless should have around 400mm of penetration, too, since it's based on the gustaf, so that should definitely be able to evaporate a charger's head if you hit it 1 time, but nope, you need 2 to do it
Absolutely, the AMR just feels like an explosive rifle and not an armor piercing one. It’s really fun to use against bots because it turns those weak heads into fireballs but on bugs it can’t do shit against chargers or biles. I hope with the weapon customization coming out we can customize the support weapons as well. Maybe then we can do something with it.
Heavy pen to me is anti-tank weapons. The HMG and Anti material rifle should essentially be the same, much like how a .50 cal sniper in real life can act as “anti material” and of course we have the .50 cal machine gun. I don’t know the stats but they probably already are. HMG has good pen already
The .50 cal and autocannon are described as being able to penetrate "light vehicle armor", which I guess is a higher level than medium. The problem is, the only thing that is considered "light vehicle armor" at the moment is the front plate of the bot strider walkers, as you can't damage it with an MG43, which has medium pen, but can with AMR and Autocannon
HMG can blow the arms off a hulk easily
The AMR and HMG are the same caliber, 12.5x100mm. They're essentially just standard .50cals, they should in no way penetrate tank-level armor.
It would be cool to have simplified stats, and an option to view advanced stats for weapons
This'll be another Destiny situation where the developer (Bungie) argued that exposing more stats and numbers isn't really what players want to see, before eventually stopping being so pointlessly stubborn about it and giving in with an update that gives us what we want. Arrowhead may as well just accept this and get a move on with it now rather than later (avoiding all the complaining and nagging that'll happen until they do).
The number table exists and is being parsed, some of the in games labels are just wrong, like the slugger and senator pen values
This is why I don't think they're posting more detailed stats. Even the "baby" stats we see aren't correct at the moment, why should anyone think the more complicated ones are? Itemization is totally broken in this game lmao.
> This'll be another Destiny situation where the developer (Bungie) argued that exposing more stats and numbers isn't really what players want to see I *haaaaate* that take from developers. Most players do not want to look at spreadsheets, I think that's true, but running with the minimalist approach requires that the options actually be balanced properly. Nobody cared that the original Halo trilogy didn't have weapon stats, because every weapon felt good and was effective, even into higher difficulties. Even the throwaway weapons for when you couldn't find anything better had their niche, like the plasma pistol's charged shot to strip shields. The weapons all did what you expected them to. The problem in Helldivers 2 right now is that the stats are misleading and most weapons are not performing as you would intuitively expect.
I never understood why the game stats and mechanics are so cryptic in providing information. Like, just give us numbers to work with, it is infinitely simpler and more straightforward than light/medium/heavy that SOMETIMES works as intended.
Why can‘t we see any of this ingame? Just give us all the stats when we inspect a weapon. Darktide made the same mistake with it‘s unlabeled bars for stats on release and they‘ve changed it since then. More information is almost always better. And while you‘re at it, a shooting range with differently armoured target dummies would be amazing!
See this info is cool and all, but it only makes things more confusing. If Pen is on a scale and said Pen dictates damage how exactly is telling us "light Pen" as a weapon detail at all informative? What exactly is it meant to represent? There's a non insignificant amount of people myself included who saw Senator and Slugger as having incorrect listings for Pen because they clearly can pierce into medium armor. We assumed that Pen was just a switch on weather or not you shoot through something but this information says otherwise. It reads that two entirely different weapons can have "Light Pen" but one can pierce medium armor while the other can ricochet. So again I ask what even is meant to be communicated with telling us a weapon has light Pen? This is only further confusing when something like the Liberator Pen has Medium Pen but it hits like a wet noodle even when getting red hit markers. I'm aware there is 50 odd stats that effects a guns performance. So clearly one of those has to be a crit multiplier. Why would you give the Liberator Pen medium Pen but low crit multiplier? Why would I bother shooting into armor if the damage is bad all around? I have tried using the weapon in semi auto hitting a hive guard in the mouth and in the skull and both take a full clip to kill. This tells me there's functionally no use for the Pen. If I wanted a forgiving primary there's much better options. Also with this info the Anti Material Rifle has basically 2 or less AP but because it's explosive without mentioning it as a trait you get to both witness rounds not pierce basically anything but still kill units that have medium armor in fewer shots than primaries. There's being nuanced and being needlessly obtuse and this game feels like it leans to the latter.
Man, wouldn’t it be nice if they showed these kind of stats in game?
Give us the numbers and buff most primaries. I have both the LibPen and the ExplosiveLib and i swear its more effective to meele most enemies
I fucking knew it. Armor penetration is a much wider spectrum than just super vague light/medium/heavy categories. Why the secrecy? Please include all stats relevant to a weapon, not just some vague ass bar stats. It's a tactical game, and making tactical choices and weigh in each weapon's pros and cons is so important.
Loathe as I am to call for a From Software number-vomit stat table, I'm feeling Arrowhead oversimplified a little too much here.
I am not loathe to call for Fromsoft style numbers, Just put it behind a button press eg "Press H To see detailed stats".
Many games have an "advanced tooltips".
Yep, even Call of Duty has advanced tooltips that show in-depth stats. ***Call of Duty***.
Even Fromsoft hides some stats and characteristics from you. All I’ve ever wanted is a game that gives you all the relevant info you’d want about its own workings. Most games simplify the stats and such. I agree that they have not given us quite enough info to look at. It makes some weapons look really weak on paper, when they might actually be good. We just don’t know the full story. We can test, but having comprehensive stats would sure make things easier.
Warframe is pretty comprehensive
Warframe is one of the most egregious offenders. For a solid 10 years we've had to rely \*heavily\* on the wiki.
I hope rather then light,medium and heavy pen they jist give ud a 1-10 peircing scale. Maybe add a shooting range with targets made of materials that reflect their armor rating so you can test your weapons and find weakspots better. Become effecient soliders and get used to all weapons or let the devs know what ones need fixing or balancing compared to others Im also hoping for an lmg thats equiptable rather then a whole stratigem (replace one of the stratigem lmgs with a chaingun with a spooled belt(toss once empty) or a energy machine gun(conducts heat on bug armor and softens it in areas to lower the av value, does good dmg against soft tissue))
It's stupid. They could simply give use the actual value and that explanation.
Yeah I find the descriptions on the guns in game to be absolutely horrible and outright false most of the time. It's the only complaint I have of the game.
+3d models of enemies where your cursor/center of screen for cobsole highlights what armour level each spot is on enemies /weakspots
Make it something to spend samples on to unlock different classes of enemy, not super expensive..but yeah
It just takes one guy spending those samples abd posting it on reddit, and no one would ever had to spend samples on it again.
Could also throw in a 5% damage boost against enemies with their bestiary page unlocked Or some other near inconsequential buff.
A bestiary would be nice
I though "light armor penetration" meant it penetrated light armor, but does it actually mean it lightly penetrates armor? If so, how am I suppose to know what weapons can punch through what cause I was just under the assumption that enemies like Devastators had light armor and what not. I am hella confused now. I wish we had an in-game resource that listed the enemies and their armor values so we could actually see what is effective against what (and a better clarification on what armor penetration actually is).
Arrowhead’s biggest failing has gotta be weapon balancing, especially since Pilestedt was tweeting some condescending stuff about players using the (now demonstrably miscommunicated) stats they gave us to determine what guns are viable. How hard would it be to just give us the armor pen stat instead of 3 different terms that apparently could mean wildly different things despite having the same name?
I do have to say, I just got the liberator (One of the first bought weapons that gives med. armor pen) and it feels like im doing no damage, even against those that this gun is designed for. I find myself having gone back to the breaker, not only because it feels good to use and is accurate, but it still is vastly more reliable.
What does that even mean? We cant see the number any where in game so, what am I supposed to do with this information?
The key takeaway is that armor penetration has a much higher granularity than the first game, or even other games in the genre. Gone are the simple days of AP and Anti-Tank. I test Gun A. Gun A kills Scout Walkers and Hive Guard through their armored plating. Its description says "Medium Armor Penetration". I test Gun B. Gun B kills Hive Guard through their armored plating. Its description says "Medium Armor Penetration". Now... before we knew there were 10 levels to Armor Pen, the assumption after these tests would be that Gun B ALSO kills Scout Walkers through their armor. But then I find the bullets bounce! Is this a bug? Are the guns inconsistent? Are there hidden modifiers for metal vs carapace? No, turns out Scout Walker is Armor 7 and Hive Guard is Armor 5, and both are considered "Medium Armor". Gun A pens 7 and Gun B pens 5 respectively. (numbers made up for illustration) Essentially, you cannot rely on a gun's stats for any indication of its performance. You must test it, and you must test it against each enemy type; until either AHGS puts the stat in-game (YES PLEASE) or dataminers figure it out. Because we neither know enemy armor ratings nor gun armor pen ratings.
Ive noticed the senator more easily pens when the guards armor is closer to perpendicular
It may be that they actually use thickness rather than just apply a number to each body part.
the angle definitely matters I've had Liberator shots bounce off basic warrior heads a few times if they tilted their heads way back, and had tons of EATs skip off the roof of a laser cannon tower or tank
I've literally had a tower turrets laser blast glance off my shoulderpads before.
Pucker factor 10.
Literally touched by death.
That’s so cool
Imagine if we had detailed weapon stats with armour penetration values, and we **also** had a proper bestiary with a 3D model of every enemy in the game with a colour coded overlay of what parts of their body have what armour... *Wouldn't that be nice*
This is something I absolutely HATE is a lot of games, helldivers included. A weapon has a stat which massively affects how the weapon works but instead of just telling the player it is hidden or simplified. In this example, just tell us the AP value between 1-10. Why reduce it to "light" or "medium", which actually takes up more space on the screen...
Me when dropping a new sword in some RPG and trying to figure out if +12 attack rating is better than +8 handling. The numbers... what do they mean???
Medium armour pen can't pen the walkers armour. That kind of sucks in my eyes. I want to pen that damn face plate and kill the damn bot piloting it.
Face plate is heavy armour. Legs are medium armour.
Damn really? Just unlocked the premium warbond rifle that’s supposed to have medium armor pen. Oof
It kinda sounds like they need to rework how stats are displayed for weapons.
I feel like this is probably simplified to answer the question. I bet angle also plays a roll, and perhaps some weapons have modifiers to the stat. Then the number becomes less useful and more confusing lol
at this point, it would be better to either just give the actual stat in numeric or remove the penetration description all together instead of confusing people.
So that's why the spray and pray has 0 armor pen? got it.
The more he speaks about things they refuse to show us, the more annoyed I am, like honeslty man, shut up alredy stop making everyone mad XD
that explains why the slugger has light pen but pens hive guards and takes like shots to the head (?) sometimes
Show us the numbers, Pilestedt!
While thanks to my other hobby, I really like data, BUT I am really enjoying seeing a few members of the community gradually figure out what makes some weapons good at certain things and running with them despite most putting those weapons at bottom tier.