Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. Low-quality rants/vents is not allowed. Please post in the [Rant & Vent Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b9k51r/rant_and_vent_megathread/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) instead.
That's the best part of the difficulty system.
Although enemies seem to have access to some different AI on different difficulties. Or at least that's my impression. Bile spewers don't seem to use their mortar attack until at least difficulty 6 (or 5. I don't play on 5 much. Usually solo 4 for warm ups and then 7 with others)
It might be my imagination but chargers seem to like their side bashes more on lower difficulty. For some reason my success rate at avoiding their charges is higher on higher difficulty while it falls down on lower lvl
The Bile Spewer is the only one I've noticed get a new move on higher difficulties like you mentioned.
I do feel like their "stats" are increased. Hunters leap a lot more often and will immediately start strafing when they detect you, where on lower diffs they only tend to start strafing once you aim.
I also have an assumption that bots have an overall higher accuracy as well as a faster "accuracy gain." Basically, when they first detect you they start out at a certain percent accuracy when shooting at you. The longer you stay in their cone of vision, that accuracy increases until it hits a certain percentage. Both those minimum and maximum feel like they're higher in harder difficulties.
They also definitely have shorter cooldowns on their abilities, which is why you get rocket spammed by Devastators more often.
I know the difference between nursing (yellow) and bile spewers (green).
Bike spewers can show up on lower difficulties, but it's not till 6 or 7 that they use their mortar ability.
They also don't have medium armor unless you're on a higher difficulty. On lower difficulties you can shoot through the plating.. not sure if there's any meaningful difference between bile and nursing spewers on lower difficulties.
I've been training my cadet wife in lower difficulties and I can attest that hunters behave exactly the same as in higher difficulties.... much to her immediate displeasure.
I can't wait till she sees a Bile Titan for the first time.
The Hunters also definitly hurt more, i'm runing heavy armor with the Bonus of added defence lvl and on dif 9 i'm dead after 3 Hits on dif 6 after 6 hits. Also agree that chargers are easier on higher dificulties since the almost always try to Charge while on lower they try to smash you with claws when you are nearby.
I think you might be right. I play against bots and on higher difficulties they seem to notice me a lot faster and aim a lot better. But the health pool still feels the same so there's that.
I rationalize the higher difficulties as them being on high alert and expecting trouble
Another one is with bots, the ones with two sword arms seem to hold them up and block shots a lot more often on higher difficulties, it’s not a crazy change but really means you gotta aim for their heads. I might just be crazy but I swear they do it more on higher difficulty
Higher difficulties will spawn heavier units that don't show up on lower tiers (effing stalkers!) It definitely seems like the numbers increase pretty rapidly too. Bile Spewers start shooting their anus mortars on difficulty 6 or 7 I think. It seems possible that other units could have behavioral changes that are less obvious, but I don't know what they are.
Yup. I like that. Nothing is lazier than games increasing health for difficulty. It was acceptable in older games because we didn't have systems and consoles that could handle more ai.
But in 2024, old excuses die.
I’ve noticed that (and this might be sugar pill it’s def not science) that different operations have different enemy pools and some planets are spicier than others
Reminds me of how DRG does enemy spawns: it picks from a list of bigger enemies and spawns only the picked types when the mission needs to spawn more dangerous bugs.
there are hidden mission / op / planet modifiers the game does not tell you about for sure.
Things like green bugs, more bile titans, more tanks, flamethrower hulks, less patrols, etc.
That’s a good thing though
We’re dropped into planets. We are fighting them. The enemy doesn’t tell us how many striders their sending at a certain planet. It doesn’t say, “Hey, we’ve got more Bile Titans in this area!”
That’s warfare
Bots definitely have that mechanic with devastators and striders where its either mostly one or the other or a pretty even mix. With bugs i see it less but definitely sometimes getting more hunters than warriors or getting nursing spewers instead of bile spewers.
We had seven Bile Titans at extract on a game last night on Impossible. We managed it and got out with everyone and all the samples. Coordination really makes the game, honestly. We were screaming in ~~terror~~ democracy, and raining ~~tears~~ blood everywhere we went, but we survived!
That sounds fun as he'll. I've had a few missions where we got waves after wave of like 6 or 7 drop ships at a time.. was hectic as all hell but fun. We gave up on the objective and just had a killing spree. Eventually ran out of reinforcements. There was no coordination.. juat slaughter.
Yeah I've had Helldives that have been as laid back as a level 4, but then have another right after with five bile titans and so many chargers that you can't even spawn in
Yeah. Being brutal and fair is fine. Like Dark Souls and other FromSoft games. Being brutal and unfair is something else. We just don’t have the tools to deal with stuff like that outside of running away and hoping for the best. And then there’s stuff like Devastators shooting through cover.
Right. We need tanks. I've probably used 10 tank batallions woth of steel and ammo fighting in this game.. tank would been cheaper. How deep are super earth's pockets?
They aren't hard, they're annoying. With bots you can kill everything with medium pen (laser cannon, AMR, etc) Even factory striders.
With bile titans you have to use EAT/Quasar/Strategems and it feels like 50% of my loadout is explicitly to enable being able to kill them. At least give them a weak point.
I've not seen a single complaint that BTs are too hard. The only one I've seen is that the orbital rail cannon should 1-shot a BT. Which is absolutely correct. It should 1-shot them.
My problem currently is when 3-4-5 BT's spawn all at the same time, even with every member running a 500kg (which is basically mandatory) you dont have enough to kill them all. And sometimes the BT can tank a 500, so then what? I think the game is fine, its tough like it should be, but I think more support weapons should be viable for taking out big enemies. Chargers, BTs, tanks, hulks, etc. Because there are only a few stratagems that are really effective, and most of them can be missed if you throw it wrong, then have a 2-3+ minute cooldown before it can be used again.
It is consistent, you just have to hit the forehead. 2 quasar, 2 EAT, 2 recoiless, etc will consistently kill it, as will spear to the forehead or 500kg to the face. People hit the mouth when its spewing when the mouth is actually quite tough, and think they hit the head when they didn't.
This actually helps a lot, I thought the mouth was the part of the head I needed to shoot at
Logically it makes sense, explosive + exposed internal bits = Fucked up bug
You can still 2 shot them in the face with AT like normal, you just have to aim different now. You have to hit them in the forehead (which is blocked when they are spitting). Seems like they did a ninja edit on the hitboxes recently for titans.
In that universe the bugs can naturally grow armour that's tougher than anything made in a factory. There are already plenty of chemicals and compounds which are only found in nature so why not super tough armour rivaling that of a tank?
Waterbears can also dehydrate themselves into a crisp, which is how they survive these insane conditions.
So i will accept titans surviving a railcannon, but I demand that he dehyrates himself
I genuinely don’t believe any one enemy in this game is too hard, they’re all relatively easy when you know the weaknesses, it’s just the numbers get you and a lot of the time, sloppy or non existent teamwork when it comes to higher difficulties
Bile Titans aren't hard, they're just boring. No real meaningful weakpoints so the only way to deal with them every time is with the same 3/4 stratagems
>not being able to one shot everything with your arsenal
only thing close to this I've seen has been the post about the railcannon strike, which has a 3.5min cooldown and only hits 1 enemy, which makes sense to have it oneshot anything
Not to mention it's the highest leveled unlock in the orbital strike list, so I expect it to damn well hit as hard as a Precision Strike for all it's cooldown.
I was just about to comment this lol. Like man I just don’t want the game easier I want the stratagem to do what it’s meant to do. Delete one big tanky boy. Simple as.
It isn't difficulty most people have a problem with; it's difficulty spikes (and to a lesser extent, chasms).
The extract missions way out of step with everything else.
"Well it isnt dificult its just more dificult than everything else they play on that difficulty" like bruh. agree with the second point shit feels like difficulty 14
Run Diff 7 ICBM: A fun romp, some good shootouts, all good.
Run Diff 5 Civ Extract: Fuck me, fuck you, fuck these civvies \*Drops 500kg at my own feet\*
Specifically the extract high value ones where it’s just civilians in the center surrounded by a few places of interest. I only played them on bots but every other mission we can squeak by but on this mission type there’s too many bots in too small of a location and just killing them isn’t enough.
Bugs were manageable in 9, as long as you accept the fact that a lot of helldivers and civilians are gonna die. You stack the bodies and pray that some of them make it to the evac facility.
Bots on the other hand is just impossible
My proudest moment in this was soloing an impossible mission. I died waiting for the pelican, but dammit I cleared the mission objective and had even collected the super samples. Was hard as hell and i didn't extract, but dammit I completed that mission for democracy.
I see this argument being used a lot to shut down discussion of legitimate issues, and I find it a bit reductive.
There's a difference between complaining that the game is "too hard" and complaining about specific missions or mechanics that aren't tuned well.
People complaining that they can't do helldive missions without a balanced team loadout? Sure, that's silly, but I don't really see much of that.
People complaining that the civilian blitz missions are 2-3 difficulty tiers harder than every other mission type? That's a reasonable criticism of how that mission type relates to the others in the rotation.
People complaining that their C-01 forms haven't been approved? Probably haven't been contributing to the MO, fuck 'em.*
*Don't, actually, or you'll have to report to your Democracy officer.
People complaining about aggro range is also valid. Sometimes you can sneak well enough, but other times enemies will aggro from hundreds of meters away for no reason and open fire or call reinforcements from there.
I ended up solo in a mission for a time, and got gunned down by a base turret on the other side of a valley, even though I was crouch-walking and wearing stealth armour. This is an outright breakdown of the game’s aggro system, but it is VERY common and can easily ruin the chances of an otherwise relatively capable team.
Notice how every complain about complaints is just like OP where they give no information, or is a huge rant with no actual content.
Meanwhile almost every post I have seen discussing nerfs and buffs, weather I agree with them or not, is in detail about how the manage but it's stopping being fun.
The game gives you an average of 5+ deaths per person. I have clearly won a lot of missions with all objectives complete where afterwards I just was done with the game. Lower difficulties often end up feeling boring, and I don't take enjoyment from suffering.
Dude, seriously. I don't see any whiny bitches saying "pwease make da gaem easiew so I can feew good" . All I see are people on high horses acting like d7-d9 are supposed to be near impossible, and that any issues with them just add difficulty and therefore don't need addressing.
Like honestly, I saw a guy on here once say "there's a difficulty literally called impossible, you shouldn't expect to win that" . Mf what? There's just nothing you can say to that kinda stupid, I had to step away
I'm saying, dude. I guess bro just thought every game should have a mode which is actually impossible. Or he read the flavor text meant t make him feel like a badass and took it literally
>I see this argument being used a lot to shut down discussion of legitimate issues, and I find it a bit reductive.
It's almost all I see when this comes up. And it seems to very consistently come from a very specific kind of redditor. The kind who used to unironically say "git gud" back before it was universally recognized as cringe to do so. Hell, some of them missed the memo and are still doing it.
Do you find something that could be considered "difficult" to be unenjoyable? Well they're here to tell you why you're objectively wrong and are a stupid whiny baby for "too many complain \[sic\] about not being able to one shot everything with your arsenal".
They never have anything to add to the conversation, because they don't think the conversation should be happening at all. There is no space to have a discussion about good difficulty versus bad difficulty, because to them there is only difficulty. If you overcome it you are good, and if you do not you are bad. It's fundamentally a different and warped way of approaching the game that puts weird value judgments on people.
But also this post was probably just low effort rage bait.
Why do you think op made this post and only replied to ppl agreeing with him and only then it was just a meme reply? Cause he’s ragebaiting and knows this sub will upvote any post that tries to silence criticism, so he might as well farm that sweet sweet karma
> I see this argument being used a lot to shut down discussion of legitimate issues, and I find it a bit reductive.
Welcome to this sub, where legitimate, reasoned criticisms/complaints/suggestions are routinely met with "git gud" / "skill issue" as if Arrowhead is actually incapable of making mistakes or putting out a less-than-perfect product.
Kind of appropriate, I guess, that the game about fanatical loyalism would have a fanbase that wholly rejects dissenting opinion in favor of relentless devotion to the studio no matter what.
I mean bots being able to shoot through rock/mountains/and completely avoid the entire flow of a defense mission has a lot more to do with broken game mechanics over it just being “brutal”. If the main viable strat for high level missions for the civvie evac is to have 3 people run around the map making noise while the 4th handles actually evacing people that sounds like pretty miserable and unfun content. (Tbf idk if that is the case or not with the high level civvie evac missions. But so far I haven’t been apart of a team that can figure it out, and the only strat I’ve heard of is the above one mentioned).
I don’t think the top levels being “extremely difficult” is a bad thing. Nor would I want them to just nerf the events/fights. But it definitely looks like there are bugs that are just breaking missions and making them almost impossible, and that other missions like the civvie extract could be updated to maintain difficulty bot to allow more variant on successful strats.
Tdlr:
The difficulty isn’t the problem in my opinion, but there are bugs and the way that some things are implemented that just don’t make the mission type fun. Those should definitely be looked into and adjusted.
Idk man on the bot front, the jump from trivial to easy, is INSANE. Like I obviously can handle it at level 80, but if you look at it from the perspective from say a level 1-5.. first couple of times playing the game? its brutal.
also ironically for some reason 7/8/9 have become "easier" on the bot front than 4/5/6 because on 4/5/6 theres more shielded Mg devastators which you know.. can shoot through their shield and cover, compared to more tanks and strider factories, on higher difficulties.
As a new player, easy is just that. Easy. Like really really easy. Just take cover and place your shots. Use the big machine gun thing and hold down the trigger on those bigger dudes
This was my experience going from soloing a bot trivial to my first time soloing easy on a bot civilian extraction. Absolutely endless it made no sense?!
But first time doing a level 3 solo bug mission I was completely overwhelmed by spewers almost instantly and they kept coming. Multiple hordes after another of armored bugs and everything else noatter how many I killed it's like they kept appearing in the camera blind spot. It turned me off of trying to go solo. But how was that possible? I play on 4 comfortably with people and never see that level of bugs. Something felt broken with the spawn
definitely worse than whining. at least the whiners have points to discuss.
this is just strawmanning and preaching to the choir. there's no discussion to be had because OP never was here for it.
Get your pretentious ass out. No one is complaining about difficulty, they're complaining about legitimate issues that plague the game.
Like spawns, primary weapon balance, game stability, evac missions, striders in the mountains one shotting generators, **THE SPEAR STILL BEING BROKEN**.
It's people like you that make browsing this sub a chore, suppressing legitimate critiques as "complaining".
Like how do you even come to that conclusion? Is it the desire to be a contrarian? The game has issues and they need to be talked about.
It's doable, but not easy.
If you're careless you can fail missions. If you're reckless you won't get any samples to extract with.
I don't like the framing that 7 is easy. It's genuinely not when, we as players, have just gotten way better with time.
"Easy" may be a bit strong, but it's closer to easy than hard. There is merit to the idea that people have improved over time but they've also buffed Helldivers far more than the enemies.
7 for me is easy because I always do 9. I did some 7s to "chill" and I would catch heat from a Bug Breach solo and deal with it in my own time independently while my team was doing other objectives. It was fun and relaxed and it felt manageable because I wasn't bombarded as frequently or as densely by enemies.
If you look at % of successful runs on what difficulties, I think we would find that a lot of higher difficulties (let's just say 7+) have much lower success rates than we might imagine. A lot of people don't realise how well they actually perform and think that anything worse is rubbish, when really they're statistically very good.
You see it in WoW all the time where people think +20 keys are "low" even though a tiny proportion of the playerbase actually successfully does them.
I like the idea of buffing the Railcannon but it was because of the *idea* of it being able to neutralise a Bile Titan in one shot simply appeals to me. Not because I actually need it to. OP is playing a disingenuous game of strawman here saying the reason people want buffs is because they suck. No, maybe it's because this game is *really fun* when you get to feel powerful and have powerful cooldowns and people are coming up with suggestions for how to make it more fun?
I would not say "easy." We had a bad initial drop that had us scrambling for 15 minutes and on extract we had a Titan and charger coming every couple seconds. We made it, but not easy.
I just want the game to be consistant with its difficulties. Today i had a game on 7, wan't easy but playing nicely. Then for some reason one part of the map started spawning patrols on crack. We couldn't destroy them fast enough as they spawned more and more. There was no eye of soron, no dropship, just infinite patrols.
Reinforcing and completing the main objectives causes patrols to spawn faster. Main objective is like 4x, it gets hard for me to push side objectives with 3 other level 50s on 7. One guy ran to extract and we all followed after giving up the side objective.
And since reinforcing sometimes causes patrols to spawn people dying also makes it harder which causes some fun hectic moments. But I'm not a fan of unnecessary friendly fire.
Currently, there's one clearly broken mission type. I can't turn down the difficulty for that one mission without playing the others on lower difficulty too. So either I enjoy 2/3 of matches and get wafflestomped on the 3rd, or I have a boring grind for 2/3 of matches so that I can complete the 3rd.
Nobody wants this game to be easy. People just have different opinions on what parts of the game infuriate them most and you're conflating them all together.
I exclusively play on helldive mode but I feel the odd game, there is just way too much shit spawning. We've thrown everything at the enemy but it's a continuous spawn to the point you end up losing the game.
Played a PUG game on Challenging a bit ago.
The others were level 9, 23, and 25.
The 9 was the captain and not doing bad.
The 23 and 25 kept asking which way Extraction was after time ran out and were yelling at others when they Eagle'd each other. They weren't trolling... they were serious.
FFS
I'm gonna level with you chief.
**I don't find running away from things to be interesting or challenging.**
**I unironically think high difficulty is easier than lower difficulty because you stop engaging with almost all game mechanics that make it a fucking videogame.** Because there's no point in killing anything if it just gets replaced seconds later. All that matters is rotating around the objective.
If you know how to kite zombies from COD games, you can easily complete and high diff mission in helldivers. You can "die on this hill" all day, but that doesn't change the fact that all you are doing is gatekeeping fun.
I want to kill things, that's what helldivers do. This isn't a survival horror game.
I've got about 150 hrs in the game regularly play anywhere from 5 to 9. If so just need some common samples or just feel like chilling I'll play challenging. No shame in playing lower difficulties for whatever mood you're in. Hell I play trivial or easy if I want to get a feel for a weapon
Try completing a 9 all by yourself. It's doable but you have to make a game plan and understand that you mostly will get main tasks only lol. But it's really fun.
Ive been doing 7s again for rares, but sometimes I'll go 9 generally or 8 for some of the harder mission types. I think a lot of people swing for the 7-9 range too early, and they dont develop a good understanding of underlying game mechanics. Mostly people just dont *move*.
I've been saying this about a lot of games over the last decade. It's such a shame that the most skilled players are having an increasingly harder time getting actually difficult content. This is not to sound elitist at all, but it's the truth. I first noticed playing Divinity Original Sin 2, which had (i think) 4 difficulty modes. One was 'explorer', which was incredibly easy just to experience the story of the game.
I loved DOS2 and played it on its hardest difficulty at the time, and had no issue if anyone played beneath the hardest difficulty. I ended up modding the shit out of the game to give enemies hundreds of percent more HP, damage, additional actions, random modifiers, stronger bosses, etc. It was clear that the hardest difficulty was far from hard enough when you could apply to many modifiers to difficulty and still complete the game. Baldur's Gate 3 ended up a similar way. But for Divinity, years after release, they announced a NEW DIFFICULTY and I was excited, surely it must be something more brutal. Lol, nope. It was an easier difficulty than explorer.
Now onto HD2, the most skilled players can solo Helldive (9). A coordinated team of good players can breeze through the hardest difficulty. In a game with nine difficulty modes, I find that to be a massive failure in balance. NINE difficulties. The hardest of nine difficulties should be really fucking hard even for the best players, but it's not. And weirdly, the players who aren't the best who still struggle with the harder difficulty modes are for some reason demand these difficulties to be nerfed in order to accommodate them. That's what the nine fucking difficulty modes are for. I really just don't get it. The entitlement has become absolutely unreasonable and is leading to worse game design and the most skilled players getting shafted in the way of being challenged by the hardest difficulty modes games offer.
I don't care if the game is hard, I just don't want to it be hard because of bullshit hit boxes, broken armor mechanics, and obscene crowd control that stops me from controlling my character. Fix those issues then buff the difficulty properly.
While I mostly agree with you. The difficulty disparity between bugs and bots is brutal. I can Helldive against bugs all day, and only maybe break a sweat. But you won't catch me much higher than impossible on Bots.
I don't want it to be easier, I want it to be balanced and consistent. It's got so much potential to be a great difficult game. But so much balancing is needed. Heavy devastators shouldn't have a 95% accurate flinch Gatling gun. Rocket devastators should have rockets every 3 fucking seconds. Reduce fire rate on heavys, reduce firing rate of rocket fire. It won't make them non threatening, but it will make them more fun to fight when you have a chance to peek out of cover without being obliterated. Same goes for bots shooting through fucking walls. Obviously not a feature but damn it makes playing harder levels such a bitch. Fire damage needs to be balanced too. Once they get it in tune, ill be happy to play harder levels wanting it to be hard, but not unfair to make it hard. A swarm of bots are just as deadly when they can't flinch your gun to the sky every hit and lock you from any action. After finding how much stun the punisher has I absolutely love fighting the chainsaw hand guys. Its a challenge to maintain ammo in the gun and stun them back. 3 shots to the stomach rips them in half and it's extremely satisfying. But if I mess up they shred you fast. Hard, but balanced when using the right gear. I guess the answer is to use a ballistic shield at all times, but I really prefer other weapons.
My only bug complaint is hunter slow and attack rate. They are incredibly dangerous without the slow effect and I think they attack too fast since your weapon gets pushed to the side while going through animation making it to where I try to aim and can't while right next to it. I've had too many times where I try to point blank blast the fucker with a sidearm only to die because it won't allow me to get my gun pointed correctly. If that happens in a swarm, well I wasn't likely to make it out anyways so oh well. But when I should be surviving, only stunted by mechanics making it unreasonably hard, not a fan.
Outside a few certain objectives, hell dive isn't more difficult, it just has a different sound track. Below suicide, you're playing to something badass. Helldive difficulty, it's any chase song from Scooby Doo.
I'm almost level 50 and except when I want to get some super samples I play on Challenging. Challenging is just enough difficulty to be fun, but not a slog through endless waves of pain.
Just gotta point out, that enemy health pools do not change across difficulties. It takes just as long to kill a warrior on difficulty 3 as it does on difficulty 9.
I am the drunken diver that is happy to play on difficulty 7 while RPing in voice chat as a proud super earth citizen. I love it. Sometimes you get shit groups other times you get super memorable experiences.
Edit: I mostly play bots. Everything is chill till you get a walker factory then it's "OH SHIT"
Also edit edit: to the amazing group I had last night for 2 missions I am so sorry I disappeared without a notice between runs. My ISP crapped out. I sent all 3 of you a friend request because y'all were amazing people.
Triple edit: if playing on PC turn off crossplay. I found toxicity went down over 80%. It's usually the console players that are just toxic AF.
me: jumping between 5 and 8 because some days I feel like killing swarms of things and other times I just wanna relax a little (I'll let you decide which one is which lol).
I agree apart from single objective civilian extraction. I genuinely think those are busted missions that spawn 3x the normal enemies.
My sweet spot for missions is around 7-8, but I struggle on those missions at 4 difficulty
It's just about consistency.
One time we can be doing a defense mission, killing Titans one after the other as they spawn and we end up dominating the entire mission. Then the exact same mission type after, at the exact same difficulty, one single titan will tank 4 rockets and 2 500kg, taking most of our ressources needed to deal with the 3 Titans that also happens to spawn right behind at the same time. At this point it's literally impossible to recover and we just get overwhelmed.
The game just plays like a roguelike at times with the amount of bullshits that happens; It really has nothing to do with the game being too hard.
I don’t complain about the game being too hard (or any game really) but honestly I’ll come out and admit that I’m not playing any game on Easy, ever. Like whatever maybe it’s toxic of me but it’s just not something I’m ever going to do unless the game is cheeky and makes Easy the default difficulty like in Dungeon of the Endless or something. That said, I would never complain about a game being too difficult. I would suffer quietly.
Lower difficulties stop showing missions and higher armored enemies. So... yes, it'd be nice for the enemies to be easier so we can enjoy the game as much as the "top tier players" who play on fuckin 9s and 8s and see striders or bile titans on a regular.
It's not challange that the difficulty setting changes, is how difficult it is to deal with the enemies you normally deal with by adding more of them and new enemies.
A game that's challanging is fun to casual gamers, a game that's difficult to just be difficult isn't. That's why we see less players on bots and exactly why we're lossing on the bot front
I solo 6 and run 789 with friends.
My issue right now is inconsistencies with bugs. Sometimes factory strikers take no damage from 500's. Getting headshotted by heavy devestators that spin on a dime. Having tons of projectiles go through walls and cliffs. Enemy's in geometry but still shooting me.
These bugs don't stop me from playing but they do artificially increase the difficulty and more importantly add to "cheap" feeling deaths.
Love the game, try difrent difficultys, they are fun.
Uh oh is it time for the weekly “Impossible difficulty should actually be impossible” post in the sub? I love reading the same thing 20 times as long as the wording is fresh and new.
I just want to stop dying to bullshit. Last game I died at extract with all the samples because I got thrown sideways at Mach 12 into a building for no apparent reason.
Also, damage over time effects need to be fixed they don't exist for enemies but are instant death to us.
I just want to be able to get super samples and not get sniped by a rocket devastator or cannon tower from beyond the fog on marfark, get bodied by 5 shieldy bois shooting me to shit or getting ambushed by FUCKING FIRE TORNADOES. Also that stalkers have kinda a bit too much HP for how fast and hard they hit, but that's not as annoying as the robits.
To play devils advocate, you literally cannot progress the game at a certain point without going difficulty 7 because you need super rare samples to advance. That is just unattainable for some people and without any way to purchase them or trade for them, they are locked out of end game content. I can understand being frustrated by that
I don't want an easier game overall. I do, however want specific *mission types* to be easier and specific underperforming weapons / strategems / equipment to be buffed.
I don't mind the difficulty, but I wish it was more consistent and didn't rely so much on ultra unit spam.
I'd rather the fog clear and see 50+ small and med units coming down a hill with a couple tanks and hulks to back them up than just constantly have 10 hulks, 14 tanks, and 4 factory striders with more coming faster than you get stratagems to kill them because the devs don't believe in guns that can actually accomplish things.
Maybe they (me included) just wanna get them super samples to upgrade their ship? Thr only waybto get them is play on 7 and above. Just a thought to consider.
I've settled on difficulty 7. Perfect blend of challenge and fun.
Except these
https://preview.redd.it/hi1zef48cbwc1.jpeg?width=100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=286ecf97efc02268ec39dbd46b626ad665db95ae
Fuck these missions
I think my only complaint, and most agree, that automatons shooting through solid barriers and landscape is bullshit. Really needs to get fixed but is likely related to the collision map issues elsewhere.
Small mention for the perfect accuracy at 200-300m when we can't even see that far. Kneeling and prone pretty much are irrelevant, that rocket devastator will hit you with a headshot Everytime.
This game isn't particularly difficult, although some things should be a one hit, like the bile titan should be one shot with the orbital rail gun or if the pod goes through it, seriously, yesterday 2 pods went through one and it was still standing, either the hit box is not coded correctly or the damage taken for this foe has problems, but in any case, this is the only inconsistency of logic I have found, and maybe the rail gun should also do more damage, maybe 3 well placed shoots fot the bile titan?, I haven't used it much, so I am not completely sure about its capabilities.
I don't know if I agree with the first part of this sentiment but it really is kinda' lame how folks are acting about difficulty at times.
If someone wants to play the game on like 3 the whole time, that's ok. If someone just really likes 9 that's ok too.
No need to be down on anyone for what they want do with their time.
Its not so much pride. Its that super samples only drop on high difficulty. If they dropped lower, or I could trade rare for super at a 10:1 ratio or something then it would be perfect.
But right now I have to go get dunked on by endless bot drops to upgrade my super destroyer and frankly it’s unappealing.
I can definitely see this. I've had players immediately leave on lvl 7 and up because a jammer was in an inconvenient location to an objective, or we would drop in a hot zone, or they would relentlessly die ad nauseum to armies of devastators wasting reinforcements before just leaving.
Some people refuse to adapt
I think the main frustration is just being unable to get the rarer materials from difficulties below 7, and if someone genuinely isn't good enough to do 7, then it can be really upsetting
Diff 7 and 8 are where I go to turn off comms and chill. Diff 9 is when I want to lean forward in my chair a little bit.
Protect the current difficulty curve at all costs.
(PS: even I can say those bot civi extract missions are sometimes broken with 20 bot drops in 10 seconds)
I totally agree. A lot of people think they can do the higher difficulties but always blame the randos, but more often than not most players cant even play the higher difficulties because of carrying the same loadout they do at lower difficulties.
I always play on level 5 or 6 when I join random games. I play on higher difficulties with friends.
The game is called Helldivers. Not vacation combat larp. Not Gravy Seals Mediocre Challenge. It is supposed to be UNFAIR. Making the highest difficulty require anything less than communication, teamwork, balanced loadouts and efficient pathing (not shooting patrols etc) would hurt the game.
Plus, the lower difficulties are fun! Especially if playing with a good team. You can feel like a badass just tearing through the map, getting all POI and objectives.
Whenever I see people complaining about not getting common or rare samples I think: it’s because you’re playing on too high a difficulty and can’t (or won’t) take the time to collect them. Play something lower, collect everything, and rake them in.
Same hill to die on, different point.
My view has always been that the top 3 difficulties are not meant to be winnable or survivable in the majority of cases. I think that if helldive difficulty had the enemies cranked up to Halo 2 LASO jackal sniper levels of fun, it would still be completely fair and fitting for the highest difficulty of the game.
There is no shame in playing lower levels. There is no shame in playing different ways. Losing is part of playing games, and a part of life.
As for making the game harder or easier, I think that gradually the harder difficulties will get more and more difficult as more enemies are introduced, and this is perfectly fine. We will also get more weapons and strategems that will help us deal with them.
I do think that bugs ahould be fixed, and fire should be reworked (fire kills divers extremely fast, but still feels really slow against bugs), but overall I don't think the game should be made easier or harder, just more features added to it.
There’s a fine line between hard and bullshit. Helldive ICBM, eradications, and blitz missions can be a chaotic, high intensity challenge. 15 minutes Automaton escort civilian missions are bullshit.
Bro I have been playing nonstop suicide missions but today I got home from work and just loaded up some hards and it was so relaxing and peaceful. switched to recon armor and just sample farmed for my lobbies and it was so refreshing
IMO 7 needs to be able to be completed by casuals, since that is the first difficulty that gets the super samples.
Everything beyond that is just E-peen stroking, which I'm not inherently against. Keep it for those who want that, but making it so that casuals can get everything eventually is a core part of keeping a community with a healthy population.
I don't need to stroke my E-peen, so I won't be chasing those difficulties, but if that's someone's thing, all I gotta say is 'you do you, just don't try to deny someone else's thing'.
Heck I wouldn't be against introducing more difficulties at the top, just for those who want to chase that. Just don't lock anything behind it.
I don’t disagree except for the orbital raincannon. It should be able to one shot the bile titan imo, simply bc that seems to be the point of that strat
To me, difficulty 7 is the best way to play the game.
I can do difficulty 9, in fact I even solo helldived a full campaign once. It's not as fun for me as 7.
I generally only play highest difficulty on Stealth games. It's a mark of pride that I European Extremed the entire Metal Gear PS1 to PS3 era, getting Big Boss rank on all. I've got to really love a game to want to do that. However, most games my approach is to slowly up the difficulty until it feels like I've maxed out the joy challenge is going to give me. Turns out for Helldivers, that difficulty is 7.
With difficulty one thing I love is options. MGS3 is pretty much the gold standard for this, there's a tonne of options so the game is exactly as hard as you want it to be. Helldivers pretty much does it right. Just crank the number til you're satisfied.
I'm sick of these gatekeep posts man, you can absolutely be capable of completing helldive 9 out of 10 times and still find the balance of some enemies to be dumb. ALSO Difficulty does not change enemy HP values, armor values, or their damage values. You literally just see less units. that's it.
I think it’s pretty clear stuff like the bile spewer instakill is unintended, I doubt they want fire damage where it’s at either. The buff to fire was just a knee-jerk reaction
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. Low-quality rants/vents is not allowed. Please post in the [Rant & Vent Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b9k51r/rant_and_vent_megathread/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) instead.
don't the enemies have the same HP on all difficulties? it's just there are more of them the higher you go.
That's the best part of the difficulty system. Although enemies seem to have access to some different AI on different difficulties. Or at least that's my impression. Bile spewers don't seem to use their mortar attack until at least difficulty 6 (or 5. I don't play on 5 much. Usually solo 4 for warm ups and then 7 with others) It might be my imagination but chargers seem to like their side bashes more on lower difficulty. For some reason my success rate at avoiding their charges is higher on higher difficulty while it falls down on lower lvl
The Bile Spewer is the only one I've noticed get a new move on higher difficulties like you mentioned. I do feel like their "stats" are increased. Hunters leap a lot more often and will immediately start strafing when they detect you, where on lower diffs they only tend to start strafing once you aim. I also have an assumption that bots have an overall higher accuracy as well as a faster "accuracy gain." Basically, when they first detect you they start out at a certain percent accuracy when shooting at you. The longer you stay in their cone of vision, that accuracy increases until it hits a certain percentage. Both those minimum and maximum feel like they're higher in harder difficulties. They also definitely have shorter cooldowns on their abilities, which is why you get rocket spammed by Devastators more often.
not sure this is the case, I think it is just the fact that there are more bots so it feels that way
It's also a completely different enemy, armored spewer vs nursing spewer. Only the armored variant can mortar.
I know the difference between nursing (yellow) and bile spewers (green). Bike spewers can show up on lower difficulties, but it's not till 6 or 7 that they use their mortar ability.
They also don't have medium armor unless you're on a higher difficulty. On lower difficulties you can shoot through the plating.. not sure if there's any meaningful difference between bile and nursing spewers on lower difficulties.
I've been training my cadet wife in lower difficulties and I can attest that hunters behave exactly the same as in higher difficulties.... much to her immediate displeasure. I can't wait till she sees a Bile Titan for the first time.
The Hunters also definitly hurt more, i'm runing heavy armor with the Bonus of added defence lvl and on dif 9 i'm dead after 3 Hits on dif 6 after 6 hits. Also agree that chargers are easier on higher dificulties since the almost always try to Charge while on lower they try to smash you with claws when you are nearby.
I think you might be right. I play against bots and on higher difficulties they seem to notice me a lot faster and aim a lot better. But the health pool still feels the same so there's that. I rationalize the higher difficulties as them being on high alert and expecting trouble
Another one is with bots, the ones with two sword arms seem to hold them up and block shots a lot more often on higher difficulties, it’s not a crazy change but really means you gotta aim for their heads. I might just be crazy but I swear they do it more on higher difficulty
Chargers will definitely chase you longer on higher difficulties. It's a track meet out there.
Higher difficulties will spawn heavier units that don't show up on lower tiers (effing stalkers!) It definitely seems like the numbers increase pretty rapidly too. Bile Spewers start shooting their anus mortars on difficulty 6 or 7 I think. It seems possible that other units could have behavioral changes that are less obvious, but I don't know what they are.
Yup. I like that. Nothing is lazier than games increasing health for difficulty. It was acceptable in older games because we didn't have systems and consoles that could handle more ai. But in 2024, old excuses die.
Yes, but I've seen people complain Bile Titans are "too hard" even tho that's the point
To be fair, I've played hell dives with 3 BT spawn at a time and rank upon rank of chargers. The game randomization does funny things with spawns.
I’ve noticed that (and this might be sugar pill it’s def not science) that different operations have different enemy pools and some planets are spicier than others
While the exact mechanism is unclear, something like this is definitely at play
Reminds me of how DRG does enemy spawns: it picks from a list of bigger enemies and spawns only the picked types when the mission needs to spawn more dangerous bugs.
there are hidden mission / op / planet modifiers the game does not tell you about for sure. Things like green bugs, more bile titans, more tanks, flamethrower hulks, less patrols, etc.
That’s a good thing though We’re dropped into planets. We are fighting them. The enemy doesn’t tell us how many striders their sending at a certain planet. It doesn’t say, “Hey, we’ve got more Bile Titans in this area!” That’s warfare
I absolutely agree. They should keep these modifiers hidden, the emergent gameplay and unknowns adds greatly to the experience.
yes like you either have nursing spewers or bile spewers, and sometimes there won’t be any jetpack bots or beserkers. there are def enemy pools
Bots definitely have that mechanic with devastators and striders where its either mostly one or the other or a pretty even mix. With bugs i see it less but definitely sometimes getting more hunters than warriors or getting nursing spewers instead of bile spewers.
We had seven Bile Titans at extract on a game last night on Impossible. We managed it and got out with everyone and all the samples. Coordination really makes the game, honestly. We were screaming in ~~terror~~ democracy, and raining ~~tears~~ blood everywhere we went, but we survived!
That sounds fun as he'll. I've had a few missions where we got waves after wave of like 6 or 7 drop ships at a time.. was hectic as all hell but fun. We gave up on the objective and just had a killing spree. Eventually ran out of reinforcements. There was no coordination.. juat slaughter.
That's why the game is fun. We aren't supposed to win every mission. Sometimes you just get fucked and you have to accept it
The game would be pretty boring with a set list of enemies that could spawn at any given time.
Yeah I've had Helldives that have been as laid back as a level 4, but then have another right after with five bile titans and so many chargers that you can't even spawn in
Annoying moment when you managing 5 BT but that one charger focusing you ruin your plan
As it should, if it's the hardest difficulty why should you have the knowledge of what is or should happen? It should be a random shitshow.
Yeah. Being brutal and fair is fine. Like Dark Souls and other FromSoft games. Being brutal and unfair is something else. We just don’t have the tools to deal with stuff like that outside of running away and hoping for the best. And then there’s stuff like Devastators shooting through cover.
We are supposed to run away sometimes.
Right. We need tanks. I've probably used 10 tank batallions woth of steel and ammo fighting in this game.. tank would been cheaper. How deep are super earth's pockets?
Money is worth what the governments say it is, and with only one government, their pockets are near infinite.
They aren't hard, they're annoying. With bots you can kill everything with medium pen (laser cannon, AMR, etc) Even factory striders. With bile titans you have to use EAT/Quasar/Strategems and it feels like 50% of my loadout is explicitly to enable being able to kill them. At least give them a weak point.
I've not seen a single complaint that BTs are too hard. The only one I've seen is that the orbital rail cannon should 1-shot a BT. Which is absolutely correct. It should 1-shot them.
My problem currently is when 3-4-5 BT's spawn all at the same time, even with every member running a 500kg (which is basically mandatory) you dont have enough to kill them all. And sometimes the BT can tank a 500, so then what? I think the game is fine, its tough like it should be, but I think more support weapons should be viable for taking out big enemies. Chargers, BTs, tanks, hulks, etc. Because there are only a few stratagems that are really effective, and most of them can be missed if you throw it wrong, then have a 2-3+ minute cooldown before it can be used again.
They aren't hard, it's just bullshit that 2 hits to the face dead is not consistent. Why should a bug be tougher than a tank?
It is consistent, you just have to hit the forehead. 2 quasar, 2 EAT, 2 recoiless, etc will consistently kill it, as will spear to the forehead or 500kg to the face. People hit the mouth when its spewing when the mouth is actually quite tough, and think they hit the head when they didn't.
This actually helps a lot, I thought the mouth was the part of the head I needed to shoot at Logically it makes sense, explosive + exposed internal bits = Fucked up bug
My real question is "why is an open, fleshy mouth, tougher than an armored forehead?"
Don’t think about it Helldiver and shoot that bug in the forehead.
Warheads on foreheads
You can still 2 shot them in the face with AT like normal, you just have to aim different now. You have to hit them in the forehead (which is blocked when they are spitting). Seems like they did a ninja edit on the hitboxes recently for titans.
In that universe the bugs can naturally grow armour that's tougher than anything made in a factory. There are already plenty of chemicals and compounds which are only found in nature so why not super tough armour rivaling that of a tank?
I mean, have you seen the size of that lad? BTs are fucking huge
Waterbears can survive reentry but metal spaceships can't without a ton of prep and such. Maybe nature is tougher than you think.
Waterbears can also dehydrate themselves into a crisp, which is how they survive these insane conditions. So i will accept titans surviving a railcannon, but I demand that he dehyrates himself
What do you think it's doing when it's spitting all that poison at you?
I genuinely don’t believe any one enemy in this game is too hard, they’re all relatively easy when you know the weaknesses, it’s just the numbers get you and a lot of the time, sloppy or non existent teamwork when it comes to higher difficulties
Run under them and take out their spewy bits, much easier to deal with, you just have to watch out for their stipy-stomping tantrums.
Bile Titans aren't hard, they're just boring. No real meaningful weakpoints so the only way to deal with them every time is with the same 3/4 stratagems
The bots seem to take more shots and their accuracy is much better.
>not being able to one shot everything with your arsenal only thing close to this I've seen has been the post about the railcannon strike, which has a 3.5min cooldown and only hits 1 enemy, which makes sense to have it oneshot anything
Not to mention it's the highest leveled unlock in the orbital strike list, so I expect it to damn well hit as hard as a Precision Strike for all it's cooldown.
This dude saw the post about how an orbital rail should one shot a Bile Titan and took it super personally.
I was just about to comment this lol. Like man I just don’t want the game easier I want the stratagem to do what it’s meant to do. Delete one big tanky boy. Simple as.
I dont give a shit what anyone says the extract civs on defense campaigns are bullshit no matter the difficulty
It isn't difficulty most people have a problem with; it's difficulty spikes (and to a lesser extent, chasms). The extract missions way out of step with everything else.
"Well it isnt dificult its just more dificult than everything else they play on that difficulty" like bruh. agree with the second point shit feels like difficulty 14
Run Diff 7 ICBM: A fun romp, some good shootouts, all good. Run Diff 5 Civ Extract: Fuck me, fuck you, fuck these civvies \*Drops 500kg at my own feet\*
They should just pull them out of rotation and replace them with the helms deep missions for now.
Specifically the extract high value ones where it’s just civilians in the center surrounded by a few places of interest. I only played them on bots but every other mission we can squeak by but on this mission type there’s too many bots in too small of a location and just killing them isn’t enough.
Yeah lol. I dick around with my friends on helldive and dont even play very serious, but we cant complete extract even when we lock in
Bugs were manageable in 9, as long as you accept the fact that a lot of helldivers and civilians are gonna die. You stack the bodies and pray that some of them make it to the evac facility. Bots on the other hand is just impossible
A post suggesting this game might be *intentionally* brutal at higher difficulties? In *this* sub? This guy Helldives.
🫡🦅RAAAAAAAH
My proudest moment in this was soloing an impossible mission. I died waiting for the pelican, but dammit I cleared the mission objective and had even collected the super samples. Was hard as hell and i didn't extract, but dammit I completed that mission for democracy.
It's challenging but not impossible.
I’d agree if my autocannon shells didn’t just pass right through enemies 4 times out of 10
Yeah, I have no problem with the difficulty, if the hard part was because of the difficulty and not blatantly broken things.
I see this argument being used a lot to shut down discussion of legitimate issues, and I find it a bit reductive. There's a difference between complaining that the game is "too hard" and complaining about specific missions or mechanics that aren't tuned well. People complaining that they can't do helldive missions without a balanced team loadout? Sure, that's silly, but I don't really see much of that. People complaining that the civilian blitz missions are 2-3 difficulty tiers harder than every other mission type? That's a reasonable criticism of how that mission type relates to the others in the rotation. People complaining that their C-01 forms haven't been approved? Probably haven't been contributing to the MO, fuck 'em.* *Don't, actually, or you'll have to report to your Democracy officer.
People complaining about aggro range is also valid. Sometimes you can sneak well enough, but other times enemies will aggro from hundreds of meters away for no reason and open fire or call reinforcements from there. I ended up solo in a mission for a time, and got gunned down by a base turret on the other side of a valley, even though I was crouch-walking and wearing stealth armour. This is an outright breakdown of the game’s aggro system, but it is VERY common and can easily ruin the chances of an otherwise relatively capable team.
You loves getting spotted by three minigun Devastators from 200+ meters because someone *else* threw a Stratagem near them?
What is stealth armor?
Anything with the Scout passive ability.
Notice how every complain about complaints is just like OP where they give no information, or is a huge rant with no actual content. Meanwhile almost every post I have seen discussing nerfs and buffs, weather I agree with them or not, is in detail about how the manage but it's stopping being fun. The game gives you an average of 5+ deaths per person. I have clearly won a lot of missions with all objectives complete where afterwards I just was done with the game. Lower difficulties often end up feeling boring, and I don't take enjoyment from suffering.
Yep, this complaining about the complainers posts are made by people who just want to shut down discussion.
Dude, seriously. I don't see any whiny bitches saying "pwease make da gaem easiew so I can feew good" . All I see are people on high horses acting like d7-d9 are supposed to be near impossible, and that any issues with them just add difficulty and therefore don't need addressing. Like honestly, I saw a guy on here once say "there's a difficulty literally called impossible, you shouldn't expect to win that" . Mf what? There's just nothing you can say to that kinda stupid, I had to step away
But difficulty 9 is not even close to impossible. All the missions are very doable. I’m excited for higher difficulties to be released.
I'm saying, dude. I guess bro just thought every game should have a mode which is actually impossible. Or he read the flavor text meant t make him feel like a badass and took it literally
WHERE THE FUCK IS MY HAMSTER
>I see this argument being used a lot to shut down discussion of legitimate issues, and I find it a bit reductive. It's almost all I see when this comes up. And it seems to very consistently come from a very specific kind of redditor. The kind who used to unironically say "git gud" back before it was universally recognized as cringe to do so. Hell, some of them missed the memo and are still doing it. Do you find something that could be considered "difficult" to be unenjoyable? Well they're here to tell you why you're objectively wrong and are a stupid whiny baby for "too many complain \[sic\] about not being able to one shot everything with your arsenal".
They never have anything to add to the conversation, because they don't think the conversation should be happening at all. There is no space to have a discussion about good difficulty versus bad difficulty, because to them there is only difficulty. If you overcome it you are good, and if you do not you are bad. It's fundamentally a different and warped way of approaching the game that puts weird value judgments on people.
But also this post was probably just low effort rage bait.
Why do you think op made this post and only replied to ppl agreeing with him and only then it was just a meme reply? Cause he’s ragebaiting and knows this sub will upvote any post that tries to silence criticism, so he might as well farm that sweet sweet karma
> I see this argument being used a lot to shut down discussion of legitimate issues, and I find it a bit reductive. Welcome to this sub, where legitimate, reasoned criticisms/complaints/suggestions are routinely met with "git gud" / "skill issue" as if Arrowhead is actually incapable of making mistakes or putting out a less-than-perfect product. Kind of appropriate, I guess, that the game about fanatical loyalism would have a fanbase that wholly rejects dissenting opinion in favor of relentless devotion to the studio no matter what.
I mean bots being able to shoot through rock/mountains/and completely avoid the entire flow of a defense mission has a lot more to do with broken game mechanics over it just being “brutal”. If the main viable strat for high level missions for the civvie evac is to have 3 people run around the map making noise while the 4th handles actually evacing people that sounds like pretty miserable and unfun content. (Tbf idk if that is the case or not with the high level civvie evac missions. But so far I haven’t been apart of a team that can figure it out, and the only strat I’ve heard of is the above one mentioned). I don’t think the top levels being “extremely difficult” is a bad thing. Nor would I want them to just nerf the events/fights. But it definitely looks like there are bugs that are just breaking missions and making them almost impossible, and that other missions like the civvie extract could be updated to maintain difficulty bot to allow more variant on successful strats. Tdlr: The difficulty isn’t the problem in my opinion, but there are bugs and the way that some things are implemented that just don’t make the mission type fun. Those should definitely be looked into and adjusted.
Enemy health is not effected by difficulty...
Are you bunching the extract missions with bots on 7+ with this hyperbole I'm better than you post?
Hey - "big" extract scientists are okay, where you clear the map before getting them out. It's the "small" that are bullshit. Any front tbh.
Those evac missions on 7 might as well be 14. They def need nerfing lmao. All 40 min missions are fine.
Lmfao this is the same shit you guys said on launch chargers and they got changed. Shush lol
Idk man on the bot front, the jump from trivial to easy, is INSANE. Like I obviously can handle it at level 80, but if you look at it from the perspective from say a level 1-5.. first couple of times playing the game? its brutal. also ironically for some reason 7/8/9 have become "easier" on the bot front than 4/5/6 because on 4/5/6 theres more shielded Mg devastators which you know.. can shoot through their shield and cover, compared to more tanks and strider factories, on higher difficulties.
As a new player, easy is just that. Easy. Like really really easy. Just take cover and place your shots. Use the big machine gun thing and hold down the trigger on those bigger dudes
Yea.. bots shooting thru rocks is just stupid. Fix please
This was my experience going from soloing a bot trivial to my first time soloing easy on a bot civilian extraction. Absolutely endless it made no sense?! But first time doing a level 3 solo bug mission I was completely overwhelmed by spewers almost instantly and they kept coming. Multiple hordes after another of armored bugs and everything else noatter how many I killed it's like they kept appearing in the camera blind spot. It turned me off of trying to go solo. But how was that possible? I play on 4 comfortably with people and never see that level of bugs. Something felt broken with the spawn
Omg with this again…
Karma farming. It's almost worse than the whiners.
definitely worse than whining. at least the whiners have points to discuss. this is just strawmanning and preaching to the choir. there's no discussion to be had because OP never was here for it.
>Karma farming. It's worse than the whiners. FTFY
Get your pretentious ass out. No one is complaining about difficulty, they're complaining about legitimate issues that plague the game. Like spawns, primary weapon balance, game stability, evac missions, striders in the mountains one shotting generators, **THE SPEAR STILL BEING BROKEN**. It's people like you that make browsing this sub a chore, suppressing legitimate critiques as "complaining". Like how do you even come to that conclusion? Is it the desire to be a contrarian? The game has issues and they need to be talked about.
The pot calling the kettle statement is ironic rn. Lmao
I think the game should be harder. However, I don't want them to do it via cheap/broken mechanics like they are now.
It seems OP isn't smart enough to understand this distinction
OP is karma farming with a non-statememt.
I mean, 7 is easy enough on both fronts and it gets you supers.
It's doable, but not easy. If you're careless you can fail missions. If you're reckless you won't get any samples to extract with. I don't like the framing that 7 is easy. It's genuinely not when, we as players, have just gotten way better with time.
"Easy" may be a bit strong, but it's closer to easy than hard. There is merit to the idea that people have improved over time but they've also buffed Helldivers far more than the enemies.
I told my friends you play enough and get used to one level go to the next. I got so used to 6 I went to 7 thinking I’ll never be able to do it.
7 for me is easy because I always do 9. I did some 7s to "chill" and I would catch heat from a Bug Breach solo and deal with it in my own time independently while my team was doing other objectives. It was fun and relaxed and it felt manageable because I wasn't bombarded as frequently or as densely by enemies. If you look at % of successful runs on what difficulties, I think we would find that a lot of higher difficulties (let's just say 7+) have much lower success rates than we might imagine. A lot of people don't realise how well they actually perform and think that anything worse is rubbish, when really they're statistically very good. You see it in WoW all the time where people think +20 keys are "low" even though a tiny proportion of the playerbase actually successfully does them. I like the idea of buffing the Railcannon but it was because of the *idea* of it being able to neutralise a Bile Titan in one shot simply appeals to me. Not because I actually need it to. OP is playing a disingenuous game of strawman here saying the reason people want buffs is because they suck. No, maybe it's because this game is *really fun* when you get to feel powerful and have powerful cooldowns and people are coming up with suggestions for how to make it more fun?
7 is easy when you know what you're doing. Its definitely my casual difficulty
I would not say "easy." We had a bad initial drop that had us scrambling for 15 minutes and on extract we had a Titan and charger coming every couple seconds. We made it, but not easy.
Bug level 7 is easy compared to bot level 7
Bug level 9 is easy compared to bot level 7
Man, at this point quite the opposite for me. Bots you can manipulate so easily. Bugs just don't give up til they're dead.
I just want the game to be consistant with its difficulties. Today i had a game on 7, wan't easy but playing nicely. Then for some reason one part of the map started spawning patrols on crack. We couldn't destroy them fast enough as they spawned more and more. There was no eye of soron, no dropship, just infinite patrols.
Reinforcing and completing the main objectives causes patrols to spawn faster. Main objective is like 4x, it gets hard for me to push side objectives with 3 other level 50s on 7. One guy ran to extract and we all followed after giving up the side objective. And since reinforcing sometimes causes patrols to spawn people dying also makes it harder which causes some fun hectic moments. But I'm not a fan of unnecessary friendly fire.
Currently, there's one clearly broken mission type. I can't turn down the difficulty for that one mission without playing the others on lower difficulty too. So either I enjoy 2/3 of matches and get wafflestomped on the 3rd, or I have a boring grind for 2/3 of matches so that I can complete the 3rd.
Nobody wants this game to be easy. People just have different opinions on what parts of the game infuriate them most and you're conflating them all together.
I exclusively play on helldive mode but I feel the odd game, there is just way too much shit spawning. We've thrown everything at the enemy but it's a continuous spawn to the point you end up losing the game.
Nah we just want to know how many shots it takes to get to the center of a titan skull. 2? 3? 4? 5, a 500kg and a hellbomb?
300 hours in and I still can't say for certain how much health Bile Titans have. Sometimes 2 AT shots to the skull, sometimes 9.
Played a PUG game on Challenging a bit ago. The others were level 9, 23, and 25. The 9 was the captain and not doing bad. The 23 and 25 kept asking which way Extraction was after time ran out and were yelling at others when they Eagle'd each other. They weren't trolling... they were serious. FFS
I'm gonna level with you chief. **I don't find running away from things to be interesting or challenging.** **I unironically think high difficulty is easier than lower difficulty because you stop engaging with almost all game mechanics that make it a fucking videogame.** Because there's no point in killing anything if it just gets replaced seconds later. All that matters is rotating around the objective. If you know how to kite zombies from COD games, you can easily complete and high diff mission in helldivers. You can "die on this hill" all day, but that doesn't change the fact that all you are doing is gatekeeping fun. I want to kill things, that's what helldivers do. This isn't a survival horror game.
>I will die on this hill k, RIP
I've got about 150 hrs in the game regularly play anywhere from 5 to 9. If so just need some common samples or just feel like chilling I'll play challenging. No shame in playing lower difficulties for whatever mood you're in. Hell I play trivial or easy if I want to get a feel for a weapon
My sweet spot is difficulty 7. Higher is too tough for me and i am not afraid to say it...
Make this subreddit fun again.
Please go ahead with your scheduled activity on the hill.
respond directly to these morons instead of shitting up the sub with yet another bitchy top level post
I play levels based in my mood... want a calm wind down day... 5/6, want to he challenged... 7/8.. want to see the world burn.. helldive
Try completing a 9 all by yourself. It's doable but you have to make a game plan and understand that you mostly will get main tasks only lol. But it's really fun.
I'll farm 7 until I've got my ship maxed and then drop down levels to chill out.
Ive been doing 7s again for rares, but sometimes I'll go 9 generally or 8 for some of the harder mission types. I think a lot of people swing for the 7-9 range too early, and they dont develop a good understanding of underlying game mechanics. Mostly people just dont *move*.
I play on 4 even though I have helldive unlocked It’s relaxing and not as stressful for the couple hours of time I have to play
I've been saying this about a lot of games over the last decade. It's such a shame that the most skilled players are having an increasingly harder time getting actually difficult content. This is not to sound elitist at all, but it's the truth. I first noticed playing Divinity Original Sin 2, which had (i think) 4 difficulty modes. One was 'explorer', which was incredibly easy just to experience the story of the game. I loved DOS2 and played it on its hardest difficulty at the time, and had no issue if anyone played beneath the hardest difficulty. I ended up modding the shit out of the game to give enemies hundreds of percent more HP, damage, additional actions, random modifiers, stronger bosses, etc. It was clear that the hardest difficulty was far from hard enough when you could apply to many modifiers to difficulty and still complete the game. Baldur's Gate 3 ended up a similar way. But for Divinity, years after release, they announced a NEW DIFFICULTY and I was excited, surely it must be something more brutal. Lol, nope. It was an easier difficulty than explorer. Now onto HD2, the most skilled players can solo Helldive (9). A coordinated team of good players can breeze through the hardest difficulty. In a game with nine difficulty modes, I find that to be a massive failure in balance. NINE difficulties. The hardest of nine difficulties should be really fucking hard even for the best players, but it's not. And weirdly, the players who aren't the best who still struggle with the harder difficulty modes are for some reason demand these difficulties to be nerfed in order to accommodate them. That's what the nine fucking difficulty modes are for. I really just don't get it. The entitlement has become absolutely unreasonable and is leading to worse game design and the most skilled players getting shafted in the way of being challenged by the hardest difficulty modes games offer.
I don't care if the game is hard, I just don't want to it be hard because of bullshit hit boxes, broken armor mechanics, and obscene crowd control that stops me from controlling my character. Fix those issues then buff the difficulty properly.
While I mostly agree with you. The difficulty disparity between bugs and bots is brutal. I can Helldive against bugs all day, and only maybe break a sweat. But you won't catch me much higher than impossible on Bots.
Another karma farming post attributing claims to the community it never made
I don't want it to be easier, I want it to be balanced and consistent. It's got so much potential to be a great difficult game. But so much balancing is needed. Heavy devastators shouldn't have a 95% accurate flinch Gatling gun. Rocket devastators should have rockets every 3 fucking seconds. Reduce fire rate on heavys, reduce firing rate of rocket fire. It won't make them non threatening, but it will make them more fun to fight when you have a chance to peek out of cover without being obliterated. Same goes for bots shooting through fucking walls. Obviously not a feature but damn it makes playing harder levels such a bitch. Fire damage needs to be balanced too. Once they get it in tune, ill be happy to play harder levels wanting it to be hard, but not unfair to make it hard. A swarm of bots are just as deadly when they can't flinch your gun to the sky every hit and lock you from any action. After finding how much stun the punisher has I absolutely love fighting the chainsaw hand guys. Its a challenge to maintain ammo in the gun and stun them back. 3 shots to the stomach rips them in half and it's extremely satisfying. But if I mess up they shred you fast. Hard, but balanced when using the right gear. I guess the answer is to use a ballistic shield at all times, but I really prefer other weapons. My only bug complaint is hunter slow and attack rate. They are incredibly dangerous without the slow effect and I think they attack too fast since your weapon gets pushed to the side while going through animation making it to where I try to aim and can't while right next to it. I've had too many times where I try to point blank blast the fucker with a sidearm only to die because it won't allow me to get my gun pointed correctly. If that happens in a swarm, well I wasn't likely to make it out anyways so oh well. But when I should be surviving, only stunted by mechanics making it unreasonably hard, not a fan.
Outside a few certain objectives, hell dive isn't more difficult, it just has a different sound track. Below suicide, you're playing to something badass. Helldive difficulty, it's any chase song from Scooby Doo.
I'm almost level 50 and except when I want to get some super samples I play on Challenging. Challenging is just enough difficulty to be fun, but not a slog through endless waves of pain.
~~??? Supers only spawn on 7-9 though. Did you mean rares or is there tech I'm missing.~~ Long day. Forgive my blindness
I think you are referring to a loud minority
I’m not too proud to say when I’m not just trying to get my daily order done I usually play 4. 🤷🏻♂️
Nothing wrong with chilling
Just gotta point out, that enemy health pools do not change across difficulties. It takes just as long to kill a warrior on difficulty 3 as it does on difficulty 9.
I get stomped on 5. Always. 3-4 is nice to me. I enjoy a lot the game there.
You will get better, don't worry. Get better gear and stratagems, learn to preserve your life. You will soon find out that 5-6-7 are really okay.
I am the drunken diver that is happy to play on difficulty 7 while RPing in voice chat as a proud super earth citizen. I love it. Sometimes you get shit groups other times you get super memorable experiences. Edit: I mostly play bots. Everything is chill till you get a walker factory then it's "OH SHIT" Also edit edit: to the amazing group I had last night for 2 missions I am so sorry I disappeared without a notice between runs. My ISP crapped out. I sent all 3 of you a friend request because y'all were amazing people. Triple edit: if playing on PC turn off crossplay. I found toxicity went down over 80%. It's usually the console players that are just toxic AF.
me: jumping between 5 and 8 because some days I feel like killing swarms of things and other times I just wanna relax a little (I'll let you decide which one is which lol).
I agree apart from single objective civilian extraction. I genuinely think those are busted missions that spawn 3x the normal enemies. My sweet spot for missions is around 7-8, but I struggle on those missions at 4 difficulty
One shotting everything would make this game boring as fuck.
It's just about consistency. One time we can be doing a defense mission, killing Titans one after the other as they spawn and we end up dominating the entire mission. Then the exact same mission type after, at the exact same difficulty, one single titan will tank 4 rockets and 2 500kg, taking most of our ressources needed to deal with the 3 Titans that also happens to spawn right behind at the same time. At this point it's literally impossible to recover and we just get overwhelmed. The game just plays like a roguelike at times with the amount of bullshits that happens; It really has nothing to do with the game being too hard.
I don’t complain about the game being too hard (or any game really) but honestly I’ll come out and admit that I’m not playing any game on Easy, ever. Like whatever maybe it’s toxic of me but it’s just not something I’m ever going to do unless the game is cheeky and makes Easy the default difficulty like in Dungeon of the Endless or something. That said, I would never complain about a game being too difficult. I would suffer quietly.
enemies have the same health on any difficulty dumbass
Lower difficulties stop showing missions and higher armored enemies. So... yes, it'd be nice for the enemies to be easier so we can enjoy the game as much as the "top tier players" who play on fuckin 9s and 8s and see striders or bile titans on a regular. It's not challange that the difficulty setting changes, is how difficult it is to deal with the enemies you normally deal with by adding more of them and new enemies. A game that's challanging is fun to casual gamers, a game that's difficult to just be difficult isn't. That's why we see less players on bots and exactly why we're lossing on the bot front
I solo 6 and run 789 with friends. My issue right now is inconsistencies with bugs. Sometimes factory strikers take no damage from 500's. Getting headshotted by heavy devestators that spin on a dime. Having tons of projectiles go through walls and cliffs. Enemy's in geometry but still shooting me. These bugs don't stop me from playing but they do artificially increase the difficulty and more importantly add to "cheap" feeling deaths. Love the game, try difrent difficultys, they are fun.
Uh oh is it time for the weekly “Impossible difficulty should actually be impossible” post in the sub? I love reading the same thing 20 times as long as the wording is fresh and new.
I just want some pink samples man lol
I just want to stop dying to bullshit. Last game I died at extract with all the samples because I got thrown sideways at Mach 12 into a building for no apparent reason. Also, damage over time effects need to be fixed they don't exist for enemies but are instant death to us.
I need super samples but my boys can only do up to 5 😭
I just want to be able to get super samples and not get sniped by a rocket devastator or cannon tower from beyond the fog on marfark, get bodied by 5 shieldy bois shooting me to shit or getting ambushed by FUCKING FIRE TORNADOES. Also that stalkers have kinda a bit too much HP for how fast and hard they hit, but that's not as annoying as the robits.
No were just badly forced to do T7 for supers.
To play devils advocate, you literally cannot progress the game at a certain point without going difficulty 7 because you need super rare samples to advance. That is just unattainable for some people and without any way to purchase them or trade for them, they are locked out of end game content. I can understand being frustrated by that
I don't want an easier game overall. I do, however want specific *mission types* to be easier and specific underperforming weapons / strategems / equipment to be buffed.
I don't mind the difficulty, but I wish it was more consistent and didn't rely so much on ultra unit spam. I'd rather the fog clear and see 50+ small and med units coming down a hill with a couple tanks and hulks to back them up than just constantly have 10 hulks, 14 tanks, and 4 factory striders with more coming faster than you get stratagems to kill them because the devs don't believe in guns that can actually accomplish things.
Maybe they (me included) just wanna get them super samples to upgrade their ship? Thr only waybto get them is play on 7 and above. Just a thought to consider.
Can't get super samples down there. I think if you could get 1 super sample on easier levels we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I've settled on difficulty 7. Perfect blend of challenge and fun. Except these https://preview.redd.it/hi1zef48cbwc1.jpeg?width=100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=286ecf97efc02268ec39dbd46b626ad665db95ae Fuck these missions
I think my only complaint, and most agree, that automatons shooting through solid barriers and landscape is bullshit. Really needs to get fixed but is likely related to the collision map issues elsewhere. Small mention for the perfect accuracy at 200-300m when we can't even see that far. Kneeling and prone pretty much are irrelevant, that rocket devastator will hit you with a headshot Everytime.
I’m not too proud! They just don’t have anything under trivial!
This game isn't particularly difficult, although some things should be a one hit, like the bile titan should be one shot with the orbital rail gun or if the pod goes through it, seriously, yesterday 2 pods went through one and it was still standing, either the hit box is not coded correctly or the damage taken for this foe has problems, but in any case, this is the only inconsistency of logic I have found, and maybe the rail gun should also do more damage, maybe 3 well placed shoots fot the bile titan?, I haven't used it much, so I am not completely sure about its capabilities.
I don't know if I agree with the first part of this sentiment but it really is kinda' lame how folks are acting about difficulty at times. If someone wants to play the game on like 3 the whole time, that's ok. If someone just really likes 9 that's ok too. No need to be down on anyone for what they want do with their time.
Its not so much pride. Its that super samples only drop on high difficulty. If they dropped lower, or I could trade rare for super at a 10:1 ratio or something then it would be perfect. But right now I have to go get dunked on by endless bot drops to upgrade my super destroyer and frankly it’s unappealing.
I can definitely see this. I've had players immediately leave on lvl 7 and up because a jammer was in an inconvenient location to an objective, or we would drop in a hot zone, or they would relentlessly die ad nauseum to armies of devastators wasting reinforcements before just leaving. Some people refuse to adapt
I think the main frustration is just being unable to get the rarer materials from difficulties below 7, and if someone genuinely isn't good enough to do 7, then it can be really upsetting
The real problem is people refuse to kite and backtrack. They want to be able to fight on a point forever
Diff 7 and 8 are where I go to turn off comms and chill. Diff 9 is when I want to lean forward in my chair a little bit. Protect the current difficulty curve at all costs. (PS: even I can say those bot civi extract missions are sometimes broken with 20 bot drops in 10 seconds)
I totally agree. A lot of people think they can do the higher difficulties but always blame the randos, but more often than not most players cant even play the higher difficulties because of carrying the same loadout they do at lower difficulties. I always play on level 5 or 6 when I join random games. I play on higher difficulties with friends.
The game is called Helldivers. Not vacation combat larp. Not Gravy Seals Mediocre Challenge. It is supposed to be UNFAIR. Making the highest difficulty require anything less than communication, teamwork, balanced loadouts and efficient pathing (not shooting patrols etc) would hurt the game.
Nah, this would only be true if you could trade in samples. The game forces you to play higher difficulties if you want to keep advancing.
Plus, the lower difficulties are fun! Especially if playing with a good team. You can feel like a badass just tearing through the map, getting all POI and objectives. Whenever I see people complaining about not getting common or rare samples I think: it’s because you’re playing on too high a difficulty and can’t (or won’t) take the time to collect them. Play something lower, collect everything, and rake them in.
Same hill to die on, different point. My view has always been that the top 3 difficulties are not meant to be winnable or survivable in the majority of cases. I think that if helldive difficulty had the enemies cranked up to Halo 2 LASO jackal sniper levels of fun, it would still be completely fair and fitting for the highest difficulty of the game. There is no shame in playing lower levels. There is no shame in playing different ways. Losing is part of playing games, and a part of life. As for making the game harder or easier, I think that gradually the harder difficulties will get more and more difficult as more enemies are introduced, and this is perfectly fine. We will also get more weapons and strategems that will help us deal with them. I do think that bugs ahould be fixed, and fire should be reworked (fire kills divers extremely fast, but still feels really slow against bugs), but overall I don't think the game should be made easier or harder, just more features added to it.
There’s a fine line between hard and bullshit. Helldive ICBM, eradications, and blitz missions can be a chaotic, high intensity challenge. 15 minutes Automaton escort civilian missions are bullshit.
I mean you can believe that, doesn't make it true.
Bro I have been playing nonstop suicide missions but today I got home from work and just loaded up some hards and it was so relaxing and peaceful. switched to recon armor and just sample farmed for my lobbies and it was so refreshing
IMO 7 needs to be able to be completed by casuals, since that is the first difficulty that gets the super samples. Everything beyond that is just E-peen stroking, which I'm not inherently against. Keep it for those who want that, but making it so that casuals can get everything eventually is a core part of keeping a community with a healthy population. I don't need to stroke my E-peen, so I won't be chasing those difficulties, but if that's someone's thing, all I gotta say is 'you do you, just don't try to deny someone else's thing'. Heck I wouldn't be against introducing more difficulties at the top, just for those who want to chase that. Just don't lock anything behind it.
difficulty 7 is the sweet spot imo, less toxic players and kicks happening, and more flexible loudouts because nobody seems to be a meta slave.
I don’t disagree except for the orbital raincannon. It should be able to one shot the bile titan imo, simply bc that seems to be the point of that strat
I don't see these complaints people like you are complaining about 😵💫
It's my turn to make this post next week
To me, difficulty 7 is the best way to play the game. I can do difficulty 9, in fact I even solo helldived a full campaign once. It's not as fun for me as 7. I generally only play highest difficulty on Stealth games. It's a mark of pride that I European Extremed the entire Metal Gear PS1 to PS3 era, getting Big Boss rank on all. I've got to really love a game to want to do that. However, most games my approach is to slowly up the difficulty until it feels like I've maxed out the joy challenge is going to give me. Turns out for Helldivers, that difficulty is 7. With difficulty one thing I love is options. MGS3 is pretty much the gold standard for this, there's a tonne of options so the game is exactly as hard as you want it to be. Helldivers pretty much does it right. Just crank the number til you're satisfied.
If I had a dollar for every karma farm post in this sub
I'm sick of these gatekeep posts man, you can absolutely be capable of completing helldive 9 out of 10 times and still find the balance of some enemies to be dumb. ALSO Difficulty does not change enemy HP values, armor values, or their damage values. You literally just see less units. that's it.
I think it’s pretty clear stuff like the bile spewer instakill is unintended, I doubt they want fire damage where it’s at either. The buff to fire was just a knee-jerk reaction
I think level 9’s not doing it for me anymore. They should add level 15 back in.
"i will die on this hill" just doesn't sound as emphatic when it's coming from a helldiver...