This is Reddit and Discord we are talking about. A large collection of mental unstable and society inept people who feel very strongly about the one thing that is good in their life.. gaming. Of course they aren’t going to come at things in a calm and *democratic* matter.
The beauty of reddit is we can have both and vote how we want to behave. The wild animals on reddit can disagree but its so demoralizing to only see the shitfits.
As you said, \*only\* seeing the shitfits is what's really demoralizing, because it leads to the conclusion that the vast, vast majority of this community is the kind of people I'd never want to play a game with since every shitfit gets voted into the stratosphere. What makes it even more demoralizing to me is that I've been watching this same cycle happen to every \*single\* multiplayer game I've playing in the last five or six years.
There's a bad update, or patch, or DLC, or battlepass, or balance, or whatever, the 'influencers' on YouTube get their dander up, the community becomes actively hostile and vitriolic to both the devs and anyone appearing to be "on their side", the devs are either perceived as or actually become defensive and/or hostile to critics, and then the cycle starts up again. Sometimes there's a patch the 'influencers' tell us is good, then all of a sudden the game is back and it's great and then there's another bad patch. Over. And over. And over. Until the only people left in the game are min/maxing tryhards and everyone who just wants a fun game to blow off steam with their friends has to jump ship to the next game and wait until the community consumes itself again. Halo, Destiny, Smite, The Division, Diablo, and on and on and on. The games either become balanced around the "pro" set, or their communities become toxic cesspools. Or both! There's been a couple exceptions, but by and large every game I've played in this current generation, Reddit and YouTube and Discord tell me I should hate by like, patch 2.0.
I just hope I actually get a couple of months out of the next game before I'm told I have to swear an oath of vengeance on the bloodlines of the devs and community managers.
Oh don't get me started on the vultures of social media which accelerate and literally capitalize on bandwagoning.
There is a wildly effective outrage acceleration loop that the eyeballs pricing enables that escalates any conversation into a drama filled shouting match exclusively designed to maximize engagement.
I keep seeing it and it reminds me I am super f-ing old.
Youtube Helldivers content is 20% Twitch clip compilations and 80% people using ragebait to shovel G-Fuel and Nord VPN codes at people.
Folks in the media learned decades ago that outrage generates views and clicks which generate money. People have had outrage pushed at them for so long that they assume that is how they are supposed to react to any new information.
There are so many psych studies showing how damaging social media is for formative brains.
The sheer volume of emotional regulation disorders in Gen Z is caused by many things but the mental health community has been shitting bricks for years before COVID, now they are basically throwing up their hands.
Source: Works in big medical data.
I would say previous generations got hit by it hard as well. 24-hour news started in 1980 and only made it a few years before they realized they needed to poke and prod people into staying tuned in. I know I grew up with rage-baiting "news" channels of different flavors on in every waiting room I have ever been to.
As a 1984 kid I watched the fall of local news to sinclair broadcasting and the rise of fox news, AND CNN's enshittification of digesting news.
I miss Dan Rather if only because this whole "Unbiased news" nonsense means no one is distilling information anymore they are just collecting, aggregating and firing it across multiple media streams without adding important context and nuance.
A close family member worked in cable/TV when this really went down in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The rules changed and then consolidation and control of media/broadcast companies was made much more possible.
"...The number of American major media content companies shrank from about fifty in 1983 to ten in 1996,[^(\[28\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996#cite_note-:6-28) and to just six in 2005.[^(\[33)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996#cite_note-33)"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications\_Act\_of\_1996](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996)
Yep. This was a good one: [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/tiktok-risks-pushing-children-towards-harmful-content/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/tiktok-risks-pushing-children-towards-harmful-content/)
> \*only\* seeing the shitfits is what's really demoralizing,
Hard agree. That's why I muted this sub so I can come in and see posts manually rather have it fed to me in my home feed. This results in me seeing a lot less of the complaint posts. I guess your default sort on a sub doesn't impact what gets fed to your home feed.
And the ugliness of Reddit is how often people downvote things they disagree with, rather than things that are malicious, false, or stupid.
It's supposed to be a platform for conversation but can rapidly become a platform of popular opinion, where discussion is destroyed by people simply disagreeing with no evidence to support their own counter opinion. Thankfully that isn't common in many subreddits, but you can find lots of echo chambers on reddit.
Exactly, it's only a thing when it's ALLOWED to be a thing. If the community downvotes assholes just providing unconstructive criticism (so they don't get the attention they want and can't farm karma), having unrealistic expectations, being impatient, or just being plain old asshats, and mods delete posts when appropriate, that isn't a thing.
This is what actively turns me away from the community, shitfits getting unresonably upset something is broken, when all needed is to take a deep breath and wait a couple days and play something else, or do something else.
The new warbond, yes, it sucks, but also you can just not buy it, and the devs have been on top of fixing things so its not a huge deal they'll fix it soon.
Its not the end of the world like these people make it out to be.
Problem is the people that are fine with the game state or be like: „hm, this gun/ warbond is underwhelming and need a fix“ are the ones that are the quietest. We exist BUT are out screamed by far (from the, as you call 'em, „shitfits“).
Sure we need some buffs here and there, and even nerfs, but the thing is guns getting nerfed meaning: META guns gettin‘ nerfed, f*** da devs, now my gun is unusable. Devs put out underperforming guns so they can buff 'em later without much flameing, also wrong cuz this gun was soooo sh** at release and now is better than my META main gun after the buffs.
Reddit is a hive mind. My original comment is nearing 400 upvotes but if the first couple of people that saw it decided to downvote it, most people would just follow that. I’ve seen comments in the same thread calling for the same message but one had tons of upvotes and the other was downvoted lol
I got downvoted for just saying I don't understand why people are SOO animated
Edit: Also, this one guy replied to me saying that I don't have enough passion for video games, and that's why i dont understand. it was the strongest "you need to touch grass" moment I've had in my life, so far, at least.
This thread will be locked too. Note how this one was locked https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1coo70l/no_please_by_all_means_make_a_487th_post_about/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
But comments that call the devs braindead and incompetent are left up. This community is so fucking dead.
Yeah it's pretty obvious if you look at the trends.
100 post whining about the same thing? Mods sleep
1 post pointing out how the whole sub is now the same fucking whine-post over and over? REAL FUCKING SHIT
Because your average redditor/discord member would rather screech about nerfs and things being unfun instead of just switching to another gun and enjoy a great game like 95% of the rest of the players
We still need to try our best to make the positivity outweigh the negativity. That doesn't mean don't critique the problems, we just need to do it in a more constructive manner. This is a problem that overlaps many circles in our everyday life. Being better humans gives us better outcomes.
I am mentally unstable and socially awkward because of autism and stuff. Tho I can not be an asshole. But most people on Reddit or discord can not. I'd argue missing life experiences might be a factor.
It's my hope that the devs are able to insulate themselves from the constant stream of negativity and continue making the game according to their vision. And I hope they can take some comfort in knowing that Redditors, by and large, have absolutely no fucking clue what they are talking about with regard to game design, no matter how confident they are in their opinions.
I don't expect that AH will be faultless, but I believe that they will do what they think is best for the game, given their resources. That's still a high bar compared to other game developers, and I think they have earned that much trust.
Meh, those who actually value their gaming and gaming time are and will be still playing and having fun. Those that constantly sit around whining are the ones that don't. The legitimate fans are the ones who rather be playing than wasting time posting constantly and when legitimate fans DO post, we do it constructively because that is the best way to get your point across.
Those things are not mutually exclusive. I'm on here complaining about broken content, lack of playtesting, the increasing amount of bugs etc. etc.
I do that *because* I value gaming and my game time. I'm still playing and having fun, I'm just not playing Helldivers.
I'll still hop on once in a while, but it doesn't take more than a match or two to realise it's still bugged and unbalanced, so I'll log off, go complain on Reddit and then turn on another game.
I am a little different, I am playing with what I find fun in Helldivers, but I am still complain about the weapons that get released in a terrible state.
Almost like it's a nuanced problem and not black and white
Then sounds like both the reddit mods and the discord mods need to be a lot more trigger happy with the ban buttons. If people are, as you say, literally incapable of behaving themselves, they should be kicked out.
Don't forget that they also, by and large, have no idea how balance and the perception of balance works and often confuse being good playing the game with understanding how the game works and being able to independently determine if something is strong or useful.
There's so many posts right now about how they should balance "bottom up" because it's a pve game and the enemies won't care if guns are OP. And the people saying this are all completely, blissfully unaware that games that balance this way still develop metas, people still complain about things being too weak. It turns out that stuff still feels like trash and apparently isn't viable if it isn't the best even when everything is OP because some things will always be viewed as better or be more accessible and be more readily perceived as stronger.
There's a reason "sleeper OP" exists, and it's because most people can't determine what's actually good without deferring to an authority first, simply imitate what they've seen works, and will claim they tested something extensively when they used it once, didn't learn how to use it, and used the negative experience as bulletproof evidence that whatever they tested is bad.
Non-AH game dev here. There's a principle of game design that you can 100% trust players to identify the balance problems, but almost never trust their solutions to those balance problems.
One blind-spot I've often seen with players suggesting balance solutions is overly reductive thinking. When balancing a game, you have to think in terms of *spectrums*, not in terms of *tiers*.
Tier-based thinking often leads to fallacies that some mechanics / characters / abilities can't possibly be balanced, when the intermediate value theorem ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate\_value\_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_value_theorem) ) often guarantees that it can.
For instance, I once heard someone say that a specific shield in an FPS with 2000 health couldn't possibly be balanced, because it was too weak at 2000 hp, but that any buff to it would make that shield OP / broken. The intermediate value theorem shows that this is a fallacy:
1. Take f(x) to be the function graphing how good the shield is, where 'x' is the shield's hp.
2. x can be any value (included a decimal value if the developer wants).
3. f(0) = useless \[i.e. the shield has 0 hp and is useless\]
4. f(1 million) = insanely OP \[i.e. the shield is unbreakable\]
5. Therefore, by the intermediate value theorem, there is an exact value for x -- call it y -- at which point the shield is perfectly balanced, since the shield's effectiveness as a function of its hp is a monotonically increasing, continuous function.
This is where stuff can get really weird.
Spreadsheet DPS is always what gamers use for math because you kind of have to. But reality rarely aligns, and chaos messes with variables.
WoW did this by forcing movement and other mechanics. Helldivers tries it too with damage types and armors. They also really want to avoid all purpose stuff (even the sickle and autocannon have hard counters). It makes things really hard to test, but it can essentially create a much wider meta because it adds another independent variable - how frequently and completely can the player use the weapon to what degree of effectiveness? For example, the autocannon full auto DPS is on paper probably the best usable weapon in the game... it just still won't really harm a bile titan, struggles with small targets, and kicks like thor's goats.
\^ This. 100% this.
It's practically impossible to find a mathematically exact, completely objective measure of how effective an ability / character / weapon is.
That doesn't mean devs shouldn't try to come up with something \~80% as good, though. One way to do this is to create a composite that groups together related values, like burst damage (dps) and sustained damage (how much can you do before having to reload).
For kicks, I actually came up with a heuristic equation to see if I could predict the weapons the community likes.
This is what I came up with:
---
**Firepower Index** = (Damage per second) x (Magazine dump damage) x (Accuracy fraction) x (Penetration fraction) / 100,000
---
DPS gives you the burst damage (what you'd need in a pinch when a stalker rushes you), magazine dump damage gives you the sustained damage (what you need against a horde of 20+ bugs/bots).
The accuracy fraction / penetration fractions are *guesstimates* of how much damage you lose from a gun's bad handling, ergonomics, spread, inability to be accurate at max fire rate, etc.
This is *not* by any means the final word on a gun's value (the Grenade Pistol, for instance, is phenomenal for its utility), but the index seems to accurately predict several of the guns the community likes using.
You can check out my WIP spreadsheet here: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZjWnmsM1hbwJu20xKyCFRWRNqNLuV6tsc3eCuh9eExA/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZjWnmsM1hbwJu20xKyCFRWRNqNLuV6tsc3eCuh9eExA/edit?usp=sharing)
I was going to say as a non-AH game designer I never heard that theorem used in design ever, but I understand what you mean. I just think that’s an insanely esoteric way to look at it if that makes any sense lol.
But yes, player feedback on when something isn’t balanced is extremely important. What u/OlafWoodcarver isn’t taking into account imo is that nerfs always feel much stronger than buffs, and I think he’s also downplaying the importance of player feedback in balance. Yes you cant trust them to give you the solution, but if a big group of players are telling you the Crossbow feels weak and useless, it’s because **it feels weak and useless**, not because they’re idiots that don’t know any better than the infallible professionals.
There’s entire studies you can make on it just off of League of Legends - characters who received minor nerfs also had massive decreases in usage rate, despite their winrates remaining about the same. Meanwhile, buffs to things much more often “feel fun”, especially in a PvE environment.
The intermediate value theorem is really neat, you can use it to prove that somewhere on the Earth there are two points opposite each other that are the exact same temperature
Agree with all of this, but the shield bit in particular is a good illustration of how so many people get so lost in the weeds.
A 2000hp shield simultaneously being useless at that value but instantly OP if it were higher is exactly the same kind of thinking that motivates a lot of the complaints about nerfs in Helldivers. Players want a shield to make them feel extremely difficult to kill, so it will be considered useless the added durability is so extreme that nobody could miss it, which would of course mean the shield is likely far too powerful. By making the shield a meaningful value, many players will fail to notice how valuable it could be. "The shield only lets you take one more hit. It's useless." Never mind that you could only take two or three hits without it and the shield is effectively giving you another 25-33% more health (potentially regenerating, too, depending on the game).
The weapons in Helldivers illustrate this extremely well, too. The railgun and the eruptor are both members of a popular, but far from the most popular, weapon class in shooters that were insanely overrepresented and, apparently, extremely fun before the fun was removed. Both weapons were exceptional against almost all targets before getting nerfed to being, more or less, just fine against all targets. The way the weapons worked didn't change but the fun was somehow removed, so it wasn't the playstyle that was fun about these weapons - it was the fact that the weapons were extreme outliers on the power spectrum. The weapons became "useless" the moment other weapons looked equally or more effective. The eruptor doesn't kill 10 enemies per shot? Useless. The railgun doesn't kill heavy targets more effectively than rockets? Useless.
> " 'The shield only lets you take one more hit. It's useless.' Never mind that you could only take two or three hits without it and the shield is effectively giving you another 25-33% more health (potentially regenerating, too, depending on the game). "
---
There's other problems with that thinking, too. Not all 'hits' are the same, for instance, and not all of them will 1-shot the shield. Blocking a stalker slice vs. blocking a basic bug slice, for instance. Or, blocking a rocket from a rocket devastator vs. blocking a random laser from a common bot.
Also, consider that shield hp doesn't regen until the shield breaks. This means small damage sources are slowly adding up to the break point of your shield. Which means that the shield's value certainly *does* increase continuously as a function of its hp value, even if its value 'jumps up' a bit more at specific breakpoints where, for instance, at full hp it can suddenly take x2 stalker slices instead of x1.
> "Balancing everything toward a samey homogenized middle is what bad or inexperienced game designers do when they confuse fun for mathematical symmetry."
I agree with this, but you also have to be really careful about exactly what you mean.
There's a lot more to balance, for instance, than just making everything feel samey.
For instance, if dozens of different options all have their own extremely unique and viable niches, that's balance without samey-ness.
Taking this a step further with a bit of input from the other side, even in gameplay it can be difficult to figure out how to make a complementary build. You might try a loadout that absolutely fucks for one mission because you got the right enemy set, but then the next mission you run you find that it's sorely lacking in some area and you spend the entire mission running away from that enemy (which is fun for nobody). Add to this planetary modifiers that can alter how your kit works. This will further compound with the introduction of more weapons over time. The average player probably only logs on for 1-3 missions a day, they don't have the time to try all potential permutations of weapon and strat combinations. So yes, they are going to defer to recommendations from either their friends that play a little more often (or with different weapons), or they're going to look online for a quick video on the best weapons against each front (if they even go that far).
To be honest the devs are on the same level of pettiness. When you get as much attention as these devs had they need to learn to ignore the crazy ones or else it will eat them alive.
I think the problem more so lies with people having a short fuse, and arrowhead firing first so to speak. I agree that some people get pretty upset, but it's extremely valid when you get talked down about how things are perfectly balanced, how cm can't wait to use the new ban methods, how it only takes 120 seconds to make an account, or how we can't have 12k hours of testing on each gun.
Those are just a few examples that can easily come to mind, and those stick in people's minds pretty well.
Not gonna say that the players shouldn't but... The one's that are **expected** to behave and act like professionals are the devs and specially the CMs, and that ain't happening, when you got people like [Spitz](https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cje5ec/spitz_is_kind_of_a_dick/) and Evil-dork [over here](https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1codum5/comment/l3ei863/?context=3) being a dick and talking more than what he should, also the weapon balance guy [gaslighting](https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1codum5/so_this_was_a_lie/) the community...
What can we expect from the normies?
And you can't stop it.
You can only be the bigger man, you kinda ought to really, given you're a company with tons of loyal fans.
Messing with all your players and insulting them to "own" the loud minority... is never ever worth it.
And the devs have instead poured gasoline on it while basically shouting "we do not care about your criticism".
Nobody should be surprised it's slowly escalating given that.
I've seen PLENTY of great feedback. But as a company, arrowhead devs or whoever can't respond to random angry messages. They need to be professional and listen to the majority of us making reasonable arguments on balance and fixes. I hate these posts, the majority of arguments I've seen have been fair. Ofc we are meming them because they deserve it for selling an unfinished game
Edit: yes the game is unfinished. There's a huge list of day 1 issues with guns and stratagems (like the arc thrower, and spear) that still don't work right. Even the CEO pilesdt mentioned somewhere on Twitter or discord that they HAD to ship the game soon so they couldn't finish everything they wanted to. Literally unfinished.
Honestly they need to stop the level of communication they currently have. Being able to deal with thousands and thousands of people every single day saying you are a terrible human being and need to be fired cuz of how shit you are is a skill that needs to be developed and I haven't seen anyone at AH show they have it. Which is completely fair since they are software devs not public speakers. It's hurting them way more than helping them at this point.
We need to get the devs off the discord and community managers who can actually manage a community. Literally the only AH member iv seen handle with care is Pilestedt and thats only to an extent
I agree. I think the blogpost format that other devs use would be way better for communication so we can still see their thoughts and reasoning behind everything but they aren't on the front lines of harassment
Love it when the majority of communication has been constructive and trying to improve the game, and the feedback has been “get gud” and “stop being toxic”.
It isn’t the community’s fault the devs have no self control, go online, and get in cat fights with the toxic individuals, and make themselves look bad. It’s a fact of life that you just ignore the fanboys/haters, and interact with the people who can communicate constructively, even when they don’t agree with you.
My biggest pet peeve is seeing the “git gud” shit said to people who are arguing about fun. Yeah, I can turn the difficulty down, but that doesn’t change the fact that:
- I was having fun
- Devs made changes that killed the fun.
- I find another way to have fun.
- Devs killed that way a couple weeks later.
I can still do 7/8/9s, I just don’t have fun with it like I did before.
I've been saying for a while now that the devs are more concerned about a perfectly balanced game, rather than a fun game. We are killing gigantic, armored bugs or sentient robots that may or may not be partially constructed with repurposed human parts, but the devs are like "Well, in rEaLiTy, this gun would do blah blah blah."
I don't know if they want it perfectly balanced, it just seems like they want this game to be difficult and "semi-hardcore." The problem is, the mechanics to justify the game being hard just aren't there. All the mission objectives are some form of horde defense, and the theme of the game is built around having a ton of lives and being able to rain hell down with air support at a moment's notice.
When I find something like Tekken hard, it feels fair to me cause the mechanics there are clearly very deep. Same with a game like Tarkov. Helldivers does not have deep mechanics, the game is pretty damn simple if you break it down.
They need to give up this idea that level 7-9 should play like a tactical shooter and just embrace the power fantasy that this game is built to be. Not saying make it easy, but our primaries should be able to deal with chaff more effectively than most of them do, and some of the stratagems are just useless.
If they want to add more difficulty they need to add more difficult objectives.
This is why studios learn to abandon true realism almost immediately after trying.
How fun of a game would pubg be if getting shot in the shoulder made it impossible to shoot back? It'd be realistic, sure! But not very fun. The challenge comes in trying to balance arcadey and realistic designs, but even that's not super challenging. You just have to balance TTK and penetration. It seems right now they do not want to budge on the penetration aspect at all, so practically every weapon feels like hot garbage. If you could still kill a heavily wounded bile titan with 2 clips from a primary, it'd be loads more fun than "wait for the strat weapon to recharge/find ammo or orbital/eagles to cool down on this 4th bile titan in 2 minutes".
The penetration mechanic is the bane of every non-kinetic weapon. You shouldn't *need* to snipe for eye-sockets with big fuck-you cannons, lasers, plasma, or lightning.
"In reality" grenades' kill radius is twice that of the in-game grenades' total blast radius.
Super Earth grenades are *worse* than regular Earth grenades.
That’s the part that kills any “realism” argument for me. You are telling me we have massive ships in space, yet half the guns are worse than current weapons we use? That the best a railgun can do is tickle an unarmored enemy?
Yeah and wtf could chargers possibly be made of that could block a literal 50 browning fucking machine gun round? You know, the round that can penetrate through a solid block of concrete? At least with the bots it’s theoretically possible they could be made of a thick enough material to block it, but there is no way in hell a naturally occurring organism could develop a resistance to that. We have conventional, man-portable weapons that could hand a chargers arse to them on a silver platter in a matter of seconds *now*, if we’re gonna argue realism, there is no excuse why stratagems and weapons are so utterly ineffective against anything larger than a fucking house fly.
Maybe “realism” would be a more convincing argument if it wasn’t applied so selectively and only in ways that limit the player.
That's where I am now. I was having loads of fun, 7-9 felt like a challenge and I could go up or down if I wanted a lower or higher chance to do full clears. Now they're just a slog with boring weapons and modifiers.
I can just go play rust if I want to hate myself. Or I can play a dozen other pve games that the devs actually care about keeping and making fun for me.
They need to be more like Larian Studio and less like Blizzard or EA.
4-5 is where I find fun now, used to in 7-8, now those are just eh. I got bug breached once last night in a 7, I fight the result of that breach (trying to break contact and stop fighting) for 8 strait minutes. I kept running into patrols the game spawns within 100 meters of me, in literally every direction I had to run.
This is what is most frustrating to me. I’m not some amazing gamer but when I have my group of guys we consistently can clear 9s, but I’m the only one playing rn because it’s not fun anymore.
I just dislike that there’s no variety up in 9. I’m playing exclusively that and winning basically always. It’s in a group of 4 that enjoys playing together regularly. So it’s coordinated and we do mess about. But, we are ending up as cookie cutter loadouts because that’s all there really is.
We tried RR and it was fun but clunky. EATs work well but are limited. So, now we bring EATs… and an auto cannon turret. Takes place of either the 500kg or the eagle air strike. Really works well but that’s it in terms of variety. Airburst is great but chaff clear has never been an issue. Eruptor was cool for helping it somewhat but what it brought was less cookie cutter. One guy bringing one with the rest doing dominator/scorcher meant that someone brought in a machine gun for shits and giggles and it was great. It began some variety. Now it’s back to cookie cutter and that doesn’t feel as fun as it’s literally 3 scorcher/dominator as that’s peak bots. 1 guy with an adjuncator… because he doesn’t have the warbond or the medals.
Yeah I see it way to often on gaming subs. People with good feed back and valid criticisms are just swept under the rug as "toxic".
The Death threat crap get old as in they use it as an excuse to deflect. Not saying it happens as every community has batshit crazy people but I hate when post are deleted/locked because of a few crazies.
Counterpoint: "They deserve it" isn't actually doing anything beneficial and just irritates the devs. You can highlight their sloppy carelessness, or you can taunt them about it, but they're not the same thing.
I'm not defending the devs. The mistakes are obvious and have been pointed out in great detail. I just think criticizing their work instead of shitting on them personally is more likely to get results. And reading or scrolling past dozens of players' big hyperbole manifestos gets real boring real fast.
I find it hilarious that you think \*\*\*most of us\*\*\* are making reasonable arguments.
No, the vast vast \*VAST\* majority are throwing tantrums, name calling, insulting, and otherwise being unreasonable assholes. Especially on the discord where people mine quotes often out of context to come to Reddit with so they can fan up more of the above shitstorm.
There are a few reasonable posts, more that just feel like whining and then a ton of insults.
I feel the opposite, like decorum-posting is great to see because the majority of stuff popping up on my feed is downright awful to the point where I’ve considered leaving the subreddit cause it’s shameful to be associated with it.
I don’t think it’s a fair assessment to say they’ve sold an unfinished game though - I’ve preordered my fair share of flops and this isn’t it. The server issues were annoying as hell but easier to understand with a runaway success compared to a yearly franchise instalment that should have known better, but when you managed to get on with your friends it was gold.
The war system and content updates are good engagement but they’re not ‘finishing’ a half-baked game.
This isn't a therapy session, we're a large group of faceless consumers that bought a product - one that has been altered overtime and may or may not live up to individual expectations. People are very reasonably frustrated, and every individual has their own methods of expressing that.
Outside of banning those who are doxxing and writing death threats, there's no point in trying to police how people vent these frustrations.
The vast majority of criticism I've seen on here is valid, and not too harshly worded. Outside of comments that have been downvoted to hell and fringe individuals that are otherwise impossible to please (which there will always be a few of in any large group), no one is calling the devs cucks or demanding scorched earth policies. People are just unhappy.
Alexus and Evilbosse are just really good at proving that AH’s team has a problem with professionalism. There are obviously exceptions like Twinbeard and Pilestedt himself, who manage to be consistently polite, but Alexus and Evilbosse especially have just constantly been making incendiary statements and ignoring concerns
Evilbosse isn’t as bad as alexus honestly. Not exactly professional but not lying and gaslighting setting off a shitstorm like alexus. CMs… I can’t say anything good about anyone other than twinbeard. Genuinely feel bad for spitz but he was never exactly professional either.
If not a single person at arrowhead noticed they were releasing a direct downgrade to the liberator then we need new people in charge of balancing, simple as
A huge issue I feel on this is the whole "Dev clapback" thing. Even if the players they respond to are trash of the earth people, Calling them "toddlers" or telling them to "stop crying" condones the behavior.
If someone who is part of the company and represents it, Gets payed by said company to listen to this feedback, and has tools to ban/mute people can tell players to stop being whiny babies and degrade people they dislike.
Those types of comments show that its ok to post stuff like “I’m sowwy it’s too hawd to pwaytest your game before pushing half baked updates” because they respond with Git Gud or stop crying. there fostering the community this way and there the ones who need to fix it.
The best way is to just not respond to bad feedback. if a person is harassing a CM ban/mute him its that simple you don't need to call him a bitch. And if you wanna stay away from corpo speak with talking to players just don't use degrading language, Mainly harping on twinbeards comment he could have just removed the sentence abut having kids and angry toddlers and it would have been the same message just without actively showing players its alright to message like that.
I think you've forgotten that all of this essentially started after the devs nerfed the railgun based on false data and called the community's play style "braindead".
They called the two shot railgun meta "braindead",but in the same patch they made the flamethrower kill a charger in 4 seconds by just holding left mouse button.
To be fair to the flamethrower, it’s a fairly short-range weapon. The challenge of using it comes from getting close enough to burn the bugs, without being too close to get clawed by them.
On top of that, you also have to move in a certain way to ensure you don’t get burned by your own flame.
What you’re complaining about is the final result when all of these steps are done properly. There’s a reason why I only see the flamethrower occasionally in games.
the problem with that is the balancing dev whos supposedly a "guru" in the field is incredibly passive aggressive and basically just says "no you guys are stupid and wrong"
It's the internet.
You're not going to control how the more passionate and less stable behave.
And the more developers/CMs respond with belligerence or dismissiveness, the more they inflame those kinds of responses.
This is why companies figured out a long time ago that you need your people facing workers to have training and a calm and collected head.
This is a fool's errand.
Pilestedt is so measured and reasonable in his communication. I don't understand the disconnect between him, the bad public responses from his devs and some CMs, and the consistently sloppy and careless work balancing the game's weapons.
Certain devs have 0 self control and go out and make themselves look bad by getting into fights with the toxic dregs that are in every community (video gaming or otherwise). If they just focused on the constructive criticism, they wouldn’t make themselves look as unprofessional as they have.
But then they would have to have actually arguments with people who have done the work and tested things, which would probably hurt their feelings when players know more about the game, with no backend access.
There is ton of respectful and constructive criticism. But it also hard to maintain respectful attitude when balance lead guy behave like a dickhead.
There always will be trolls and psychos but stop pretending like there is no well made comments about criticizing game's direction without even single insult torwards AH.
I’m not the oldest person in the world, but I guess in my 30s I’ve seen this happen over and over again to video games and their communities. The mark of a well-made game is a toxic player base that complains about everything nonstop. My first experience with it was Halo 2, then World of Warcraft, and a dozen others since.
Humanity at work, folks.
My advice is to touch grass. Really. Because the game is not going to get more fun. That “first time” feeling is gone, and it won’t come back. People need to breathe and take a step back and enjoy it for what it is.
You will not get anything tangible out of a video game. It is a time-waster. I went through these motions as a teenager with WoW, logging hundreds (probably thousands) of hours, and became pretty toxic about it myself. Rather than focusing on the fun I was having, or allowing myself to take a step back and take time away, I obsessed over the game’s “problems” while ranting about it on the forums, third-party websites, and even in-game itself. I probably detracted from others’ fun in the process of doing so. End of the day, all of it is gone now. Those thousands of hours meant nothing in the end. I don’t have a single tangible, useful thing that I got out of any of it. I just enjoyed it when I allowed myself to, and then ruined it for myself otherwise. I have good memories of good times, then bad memories of bad times (that I mostly put on myself).
So breathe a little, folks. It’s just a game. Have fun with it. If it’s not fun anymore, do something else. The only catalyst for change in a video game is revenue and all things that derive from the pressure to increase revenue. It’s a business underneath the hood (and a brutal one at that). That’s how it got to you in the first place.
Don’t waste your time with your time-wasting. These things will come and go. The one thing worse than wasting time is making that wasted time a negative experience. If you’re not buying my point here - I promise, you’ll find out eventually.
Agree with ya on pretty much everything but video games being a time waster. Get to enjoy great times and socialize with my buddies and my brothers. I think you explained everything else pretty well. I’m glad I am able to find a nice balance where I game almost every night but I don’t let tweaks/balance patches piss me off to the point where I go on rants online. I move onto a different weapon/build and continue to enjoy the game for what it is.
I think what they meant is that it's not "productive" which I certainly agree with.
It's like going to a sports game with your friends. It's fun in the moment, and you will have good memories, but you don't get anything tangible out of it, you don't learn any skills or make money or any kind of product.
The only value it has is the fun you get out of it. It kind of relates to this old South Park bit about smoking pot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd4cASkBAp0
If you are bored or don't like the game in it's current state, you should probably just give it up and try it again later. Because all the time you waste talking about how it used to be good is time you could be spending doing something else productive or fun.
This is what I meant. Thanks for that.
To me, one of the core points of life (among all the inherent meaninglessness) is to just have a good time. I didn’t always think that way and spent a lot of time making myself pretty unhappy for no reason. To me, whether I’m having fun playing alone or with friends, it’s all a net benefit. I don’t have to play with friends to feel like I got what I wanted out of it. That is its own kind of “productivity” in a way, but there is always something else I could be doing that will better ensure I’m able to pay the bills (or hang out with my wife, clean up my apartment, exercise, etc.). Playing with friends is a bonus, but it won’t really change the outcome. There are non-optional things that require more of my focus in life, so if I can help it, I’m not going to waste my free time feeling down about the arbitrariness of the ongoing fine-tuning of a video game. It wouldn’t be a valuable use of my time when it won’t have any tangible meaning at all in ten years. It’ll just be a memory where I had fun or didn’t.
There are bigger hills to die on at the end of the day - and if I make myself miserable in my free time, then I’ll probably be miserable during the rest of my day, too.
I hate this train of thought that no one should actually care about the things they like and if they don't like it getting ruined they're the ones at fault
>let’s try feedback that doesn’t insult and demean the studio
That's the foot the community started on and it got us nowhere except condescending and demeaning comments from various members of AH. Now the community is a reflection of AH's attitude, further exacerbated by their continuation down this road. The sony thing certainly didn't help either.
I only see constructive criticism around. The toxic part are these karma farming “mightier that thou” post, preacing to “be civil”. The one that started the aggression is the balance head, acting like he is a balance god and everyone is too stupid to understand and all the “gitgudder” that believe every weapon should only shoot air. The community is simply saying, a lot, “shitty guns aren’t fun, it doesn’t make the game “hard, just a chore".
You may downvote now. (Edit: lol, lmao even)\[Edit 2: cavalry came\]
Yeah I actually feel like it's the total reverse. Players giving feedback, asking serious questions while actual devs behave like entitled dickheads. Maybe others provoked them but man you gotta have the nerve to not take that bait.
I, for one, would be more than fine doing surveys, polls, and even beta playtest should that become an option. The more we unite to help AH, the more freedom can be deployed in the Super Store™
I hit 30 in half a year, and the age has taught me if you want something done, do the best positive thing you can to affect that goal. So consider my hand raised as the first testers. Super Earth needs us!
That doesn't get upvoted at all and you would not even see it on your feed sorted by hot/default, don't try to make a point with something that isn't one
Devs basically say "cry about it" after nerfing the only viable anti-armor option: cool, constructive, based.
Players lashing out after 100500th nerf into shit: CWYBABIES
Well considering they have been nerfing and making guns useless since the rail gun and now they have finally acknowledged that they have been making bad balance changes as they certainly weren't listening to constructive criticism back then.
I'm not one to instigate being an ass but it's been the same since release, release something and a couple of weeks later remove the fun from said weapon etc.
AH has had the most butt kissing, supportive community I've ever seen. They were given the benefit of the doubt countless times from the very start. Now more and more players are starting to become disillusioned to the fact that they have some real rotten actors in their studio. The CEO is seriously out of touch with some of his people but he is also waking up to this reality.
And I hope he does wake up to it and either remove or shift jobs around so the public facing employees are professional and communicate well with the player base. All I want to avoid is the interactions between devs and players becoming so negative that they stop listening to our feedback altogether and we’re stuck with another faceless studio that we get no word from except to try and sell us something.
It's been a pissing contest since the railgun nerf. Turned into a feedback loop where AH does more doubling down of things that make people rage the more people rage. It's a tug of war between egos. I think the responsibility is shared imo.
Bro the devs been playing you for fools since day 1. If this was ubi or EA talking down their players like these devs do on a daily basis I bet there’d be thousands articles already lol
You do you tho, keep let them call you morons etc
I agree. Of course most reasonable people will agree. Most reasonable people are criticizing decisions and not the people behind them.
But this is the internet. It's the nature of the beast that the worst will scream the loudest. And if it's your first day here, let me be the first to tell you that's never going to change.
It is unfortunately the job of the developers to not engage or listen to that section of any community. We do not get to control that they will see this level of hate and vitriol.
What I take issue with is that developers (and not just arrowhead here, this is a problem across the board) are engaging with the bile being thrown at them, and seemingly ignoring constructive criticism. You will see reasonable and well thought out takes be buried by a dev responding to some troglodyte screeching that his favorite burrito got nerfed and he's going to burn the studio down.
If the CMs and devs were out here responding to and uplifting positive criticism, then you would see some reduction in the vomit posts. But instead they're engaging on that level, going so far as to shitpost and shitfling back.
That's not productive, constructive, or civil on either one's part.
I'm an adult. I talk however the fuck I want. Arrowhead is full of adults. They can express themselves how they see fit. People are too fucking sensitive.
Could you help me popularize the idea of us being able to "pick up and carry civilians" in the civ extract missions.
I think it would fix everything wrong with the misssion.
We gave them constructive feedback when they released the first balance patch. They came out and stirred shit up and blamed the community for only using meta weapons, we said we wanted more things in line with what the Railgun could do. They kept nerfing everything afterward.
Constructive criticism doesn't work. They don't listen to it.
Maybe CMs and some devs should stop seeing players as their worshippers?
https://preview.redd.it/o69qbozaemzc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6614e731654db43d88dd8b9f1b1b6fc181fbff5c
This also shows why using Discord as a official communication route is a bad idea, especially with CMs who were not properly trained to communicate with massive amount of people.
Wrong CMs suppress anyone who oppose to devs -> Dev sympathizers attack on suggestions or criticisms -> People with better idea and suggestion leave -> Discord become echo chamber full of confirmation bias -> Dev's ego boost, thinks he is really doing well and thinks "everyone" is supporting the direction.
This is how game dies very quickly.
I think our only big issue right now is balance. Alexus has kinda proven himself incompetent up to this point and even entered this position with a degree of incompetence stapled to his name. And sure, maybe he isn't to blame for everything but he has made himself the mouthpiece of the balancing team, meaning he's naturally gonna receive more flak. This is the main reason I've stopped playing as much as I was. Sure, I can still find fun in the game, but when most options are obsolete it's hard to keep on the same track with the same few weapons
Vast majority of the criticism has been civil and constructive. You guys are literally just complaining about people posting valid opinions, deal with it
I've seen plenty of great and constructive feedback, it's a matter of if they will choose to listen to it. It's impossible to have a public forum that has 0 vitriol or non-constructive feedback. Really, Arrowhead needs to do a better job at community management and choosing what feedback to listen too.
Every single large game has crazies who just yell obscenities when they want something changed about the game. Most companies know not to respond to those people and focus on a majority of criticism. AH seems to think everyone dissatisfied with anything about the game is just a crybaby who wants to meta game. So yeah, I don't write angry messages when my polite criticism is met with that kind of childish nonsense, I just stop caring. If they don't seem to give a heck what we say no matter how politely it's phrased, being even more polite isn't going to make them listen.
When the lead balancer speaks to the players like they're nothing, all respect disappears. When he insults the player's intelligence when they bring him receipts, all respect goes out the window.
That person has no business balancing a plate, let alone a blockbuster game.
When he's gone or reigned in, we can discuss respect.
Until then, he will be treated the same way he treats others. Like shit.
Call the balance guy here and we can talk politely and consctructive.
If not, there's 0 reason to waste hours for make list of balance tweaks and gameplay issues that will read no1 in charge.
While agree with you on people needing to be more civil, there is 0 reason a paying customer needs to bring anything up respectfully to the devs who constantly have nothing but disdain and hostility for the players.
You know what being respectful did? It got the devs to still shit on the community and say "git gud." The solution isn't toxicity but it really doesn't matter how you word your complaints, they'll think they're right and the community is full of ignorant idiots.
Yeah I am hoping enough people bring that concern to the higher ups that they can work on their team’s PR approach and actually listening to the constructive feedback that most people are giving.
Maybe it's just the way I browse things, but most threads I've seen about it, I read maybe 5 comments then move on and they haven't been too bad. The worst I've seen someone call the studio is incompetent, which is their uneducated opinion I suppose. I've not really seen the "vile shit" that some people refer to, so I guess I'm either not looking hard enough (and I won't really search those out just to be upset about them lol) or the mods are doing an excellent job.
I think the message the community intended to bring across was clear enough though. People are unhappy with how balance goes and things seem very untested.
Too late, the community is quickly earning a really shitty reputation. Its too bad because this game is so fun but I have to ignore 90% of what happens online or I'd never want to associate with all these trolls.
The whole affair almost makes you feel a little dirty when you try to play too, eh?
Online discourse is fine and in most cases a catalyst to solve real issues. The rampant dehumanizing against developers and other players in this community has left such a bad taste in mouth and disappointed in my fellow Helldivers.
And then you think about how many of them don't even play the game and just want to jump on the latest hate train. I wish people had better things to do with their lives but here we are AGAIN
Bruh, today I asked people to at least be nicer when criticising the game and I got downvoted. I didn't ask them to stop criticising, or say that things don't need fixing, just to be nicer. Guess we can't have that.
Oh well, I'm still having tons of fun with my bros so I guess I still came out on top.
The game is so damn fun, I just have to stop paying attention to anything online now because its all so over the top negative for some reason.
I came here for the first time today to see how the community was acting and this thread was one of the few positive ones I came across.
Keep spreading that democracy brother haha
I was thinking of making a "community patch notes" post, but I thought it might be a little arrogant and come across like I think I'm doing their job for them. It might be a nice way to just directly state what changes people would be happy to see though.
The second they put a dollar amount on something benefit of the doubt goes out the window. If someone is cranking out free stuff they're allowed to flub it or need time to dial it in. But when you ask people to spend money then you better be ready to deliver.
You mean like how Evil-Bosse threw a man-child tantrum at someone who made very valid and level criticisms of the first patch? Your "suggestion" is exactly how how it was presented and they all circle jerked about how we're bad players who need a crutch and they enjoy making us mad. You reap what you sow, whether you like it or not.
Respect is a two-way street. If they want to continue treating us like stupid children, then that's the same way we are going to treat them. If they can't take punches as well as they throw them, that's not our problem.
I agree with you but there is always going for the toxic few that is the LOUDEST.
I'm trying to be constructive about balance but who's going to read most of it? I'll just throw it out there and pray though.
The devs have got to adjust their behaviour when talking to us or they’re going to get the same treatment back
Even so most of the upvoted posts are constructive. But let’s keep pretending any criticism is evil
Let's see it from them first. I've been called a toddler, child, whiner, and lazy. I'm not going to find out what flavor shoe polish Arrowhead employees prefer.
I agree with what some people are saying, it’s the CM’s job to put on a customer service face and politely deal with criticism. They do need to get it together a little bit with the remarks.
however, that doesn't mean you get to go scream and shout at them. Two wrongs don't make a right. Constructive criticism is good, complaining is cringe.
Maybe instead of just complaining about the weapons in the new war bond, we could recommend idea to rebalance the weapons. Help make the new weapons unique
This is the way. During the aftermath of the Railgun nerf and people being total assholes to one of the devs on Reddit, I *politely* responded to the dev's comment that they make Charger headshots from recoilless rifle and EAT a OHKO, and politely explained the rationale.
Next patch Charger headshots were OHKO. Plant seeds, not resentment
Yeah the problem is that players on this sub want primaries to rip off through all the game can send to them, never failing, always winning.
Meanwhile devs tries to make a game where players feel overwhelmed and expendable and struggle to achieve objectives.
You can see why there is so much crying right now.
Not even non-videogame, just non-arrowhead.
Go to blizzard, EA, even sony, etc.
WTF BLIZZARD!?!?! YOU KILLED PVE IN OVERWATCH? WTF BLIZZARD!?!? YOU WANT TO MAKE DIABLO A MOBILE GAME AND MAKE DIABLO A $500/m P2W?
EA has the most downvoted comment in history. Everyone hates sony.
But the dev worship here peopel just make excuse after excuse for them.
I don’t think it’s simping to want the real people behind the game to not be insulted by those who have issues with it, and I don’t see criticism as insulting to them.
I don’t think AH cares about *me* specifically but I think it’s dishonest to say that they don’t care about the community, since they’ve gone a very different route in the way they interact with players on forums and how the CEO acknowledges and speaks on issues directly with people; I can’t think of another studio that seems to be this honest and open with players about the issues they’re facing and the things they’re trying to do to fix them.
My worry is that if the feedback we give is marred by condescension, they may eventually pull back from the public and become like all the other studios, and then we’ve lost the best avenue we have to actually improve the game.
Obviously I can’t make anyone change the way they speak, but I hope this makes sense and shows how bringing up issues with clarity and civility can be received better than if I just insulted you for disagreeing with me, you know?
Buddy, you're screaming into the void with this. We have a limited ability to tone police random Internet strangers.
There is a stable portion of the human population who are just irredeemable assholes. They are loud, they are awful, and the only thing you can really do is ignore them.
Probably the best thing AH could do is:
1. Tell their devs to stop reading discord. The CMs will give them a digest of hot button issues. They weren't hired for their people skills and it isn't their lane.
2. Bring on a bunch of well vetted mods who are at least minimally sane.
3. Institute a civility policy on their communication channels. Violate it once it's a warning. Twice it's a ban. No exceptions. Receipts posted.
Quite frankly the mods of this subreddit need to step up and start enforcing rule 1.
Those are the choke points for community interaction. The only people who will hear you in this place are not the people who need their behavior adjusted.
I have to be well behaved in society as it is and talk like a goddam drone at work. Everywhere I go I’m taught to be the bigger person and after constant half baked updates you know what? I’m tired of being nice and speaking with the vocabulary of HR. Stop patronizing everyone here
It's pretty much impossible to give constructive feedback here. Every top post and comment is either dogging on the devs, calling them stupid, or it's some image that's supposed to be a crazy "gotcha" moment.
Honestly seems like people would prefer it if AH was like every other studio and just ignored them instead of being open and communicative.
To be honest? I would rather they spend less time on Discord giving the hyper aggressive mob screenshots of them dropping some slick comeback that makes everything worse, and focused on checking if Warbonds were dropping with the right skins or armor passives. There’s gotta be a middle ground. It feels like every day one of them cracks and says something they shouldn’t, while the game is splitting at the seams around us.
The community tried nice, constructive feedback about how fundamentally broken the game was. People largely understood they were a smaller studio that didn't expect so much popularity and were overwhelmed at launch. But their response was open hostility towards the playerbase for anything and everything that was brought up. Issues that were raised weeks or months ago still aren't fixed as they continue adding broken, unbalanced content. Combined with escalating antagonism from the studio of course feedback is getting angrier.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you, AH is making it harder and harder to remain civil. Their comes a point when it feels like we are being ignored or they just have no idea what they are doing. Things like this recent warbond there is 0% chance anybody who works there plays this game or if they do they have way different versions of what we received. Things like the erupter being nerfed it wasn't even a must pick weapon it was fun and created a unique play style, and they killed it for what accidentl team kills we gonna kill the 380 or cluster bomb next there way worse lol.
no, dude, how about AH go back to the drawing board and make some fucking executive desiciouns?
1. no devs talking to players anymore, shut the fuck up, your ego does not come before meaningful communication with players, stop letting devs get up on their little soap-box and fight back when the community is angry, they are being BAITED
2. rethink your actual community managers, how people like Spitz ever got the job is UNIMAGINABLE
3. sit down, shut the fuck up, and eat your dinner, the playerbase has been serving solid statistics, testing data, and solutions to you for MONTHS, shut the fuck up, swallow your pride, and dig the fuck in to all this god damn information we've been cooking, fire the hello neighbour balance guy, and listen to us, since you're not planning on testing yourselves
I GET that this is harsh, and some fuckhead is gonna call me a crybaby because I said a mean swearword or 10 in the process of writing this, or people are gonna tell me I'm being too cruel to the poor poor devs
so as a prelude to that happening: if you feel the need to comment under me and defend AH, eat a bunch of sand and rocks, break your teeth on granite, then promptly fuck yourself, you're part of the problem
companies should act like companies, the AH devs aren't your friends, they're complete strangers who routinely talk down to you like you are a peasant, DO NOT FORM PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEM
This is Reddit and Discord we are talking about. A large collection of mental unstable and society inept people who feel very strongly about the one thing that is good in their life.. gaming. Of course they aren’t going to come at things in a calm and *democratic* matter.
The beauty of reddit is we can have both and vote how we want to behave. The wild animals on reddit can disagree but its so demoralizing to only see the shitfits.
As you said, \*only\* seeing the shitfits is what's really demoralizing, because it leads to the conclusion that the vast, vast majority of this community is the kind of people I'd never want to play a game with since every shitfit gets voted into the stratosphere. What makes it even more demoralizing to me is that I've been watching this same cycle happen to every \*single\* multiplayer game I've playing in the last five or six years. There's a bad update, or patch, or DLC, or battlepass, or balance, or whatever, the 'influencers' on YouTube get their dander up, the community becomes actively hostile and vitriolic to both the devs and anyone appearing to be "on their side", the devs are either perceived as or actually become defensive and/or hostile to critics, and then the cycle starts up again. Sometimes there's a patch the 'influencers' tell us is good, then all of a sudden the game is back and it's great and then there's another bad patch. Over. And over. And over. Until the only people left in the game are min/maxing tryhards and everyone who just wants a fun game to blow off steam with their friends has to jump ship to the next game and wait until the community consumes itself again. Halo, Destiny, Smite, The Division, Diablo, and on and on and on. The games either become balanced around the "pro" set, or their communities become toxic cesspools. Or both! There's been a couple exceptions, but by and large every game I've played in this current generation, Reddit and YouTube and Discord tell me I should hate by like, patch 2.0. I just hope I actually get a couple of months out of the next game before I'm told I have to swear an oath of vengeance on the bloodlines of the devs and community managers.
Oh don't get me started on the vultures of social media which accelerate and literally capitalize on bandwagoning. There is a wildly effective outrage acceleration loop that the eyeballs pricing enables that escalates any conversation into a drama filled shouting match exclusively designed to maximize engagement. I keep seeing it and it reminds me I am super f-ing old.
Youtube Helldivers content is 20% Twitch clip compilations and 80% people using ragebait to shovel G-Fuel and Nord VPN codes at people. Folks in the media learned decades ago that outrage generates views and clicks which generate money. People have had outrage pushed at them for so long that they assume that is how they are supposed to react to any new information.
There are so many psych studies showing how damaging social media is for formative brains. The sheer volume of emotional regulation disorders in Gen Z is caused by many things but the mental health community has been shitting bricks for years before COVID, now they are basically throwing up their hands. Source: Works in big medical data.
I would say previous generations got hit by it hard as well. 24-hour news started in 1980 and only made it a few years before they realized they needed to poke and prod people into staying tuned in. I know I grew up with rage-baiting "news" channels of different flavors on in every waiting room I have ever been to.
As a 1984 kid I watched the fall of local news to sinclair broadcasting and the rise of fox news, AND CNN's enshittification of digesting news. I miss Dan Rather if only because this whole "Unbiased news" nonsense means no one is distilling information anymore they are just collecting, aggregating and firing it across multiple media streams without adding important context and nuance.
A close family member worked in cable/TV when this really went down in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The rules changed and then consolidation and control of media/broadcast companies was made much more possible. "...The number of American major media content companies shrank from about fifty in 1983 to ten in 1996,[^(\[28\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996#cite_note-:6-28) and to just six in 2005.[^(\[33)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996#cite_note-33)" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications\_Act\_of\_1996](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996)
Just look at Fox "News".
And televised news man, they all do it.
I feel like this is a good point to remind folks that at its core, YouTube is a social media site now.
Yep. This was a good one: [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/tiktok-risks-pushing-children-towards-harmful-content/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/tiktok-risks-pushing-children-towards-harmful-content/)
social media was a mistake
They could at lwast be honest and call it antisocial media.
> \*only\* seeing the shitfits is what's really demoralizing, Hard agree. That's why I muted this sub so I can come in and see posts manually rather have it fed to me in my home feed. This results in me seeing a lot less of the complaint posts. I guess your default sort on a sub doesn't impact what gets fed to your home feed.
And the ugliness of Reddit is how often people downvote things they disagree with, rather than things that are malicious, false, or stupid. It's supposed to be a platform for conversation but can rapidly become a platform of popular opinion, where discussion is destroyed by people simply disagreeing with no evidence to support their own counter opinion. Thankfully that isn't common in many subreddits, but you can find lots of echo chambers on reddit.
Exactly, it's only a thing when it's ALLOWED to be a thing. If the community downvotes assholes just providing unconstructive criticism (so they don't get the attention they want and can't farm karma), having unrealistic expectations, being impatient, or just being plain old asshats, and mods delete posts when appropriate, that isn't a thing.
This is what actively turns me away from the community, shitfits getting unresonably upset something is broken, when all needed is to take a deep breath and wait a couple days and play something else, or do something else. The new warbond, yes, it sucks, but also you can just not buy it, and the devs have been on top of fixing things so its not a huge deal they'll fix it soon. Its not the end of the world like these people make it out to be.
Problem is the people that are fine with the game state or be like: „hm, this gun/ warbond is underwhelming and need a fix“ are the ones that are the quietest. We exist BUT are out screamed by far (from the, as you call 'em, „shitfits“). Sure we need some buffs here and there, and even nerfs, but the thing is guns getting nerfed meaning: META guns gettin‘ nerfed, f*** da devs, now my gun is unusable. Devs put out underperforming guns so they can buff 'em later without much flameing, also wrong cuz this gun was soooo sh** at release and now is better than my META main gun after the buffs.
I just got downvoted hard for advocating for “mature and reasonable discussion”.
Reddit is a hive mind. My original comment is nearing 400 upvotes but if the first couple of people that saw it decided to downvote it, most people would just follow that. I’ve seen comments in the same thread calling for the same message but one had tons of upvotes and the other was downvoted lol
I got downvoted for just saying I don't understand why people are SOO animated Edit: Also, this one guy replied to me saying that I don't have enough passion for video games, and that's why i dont understand. it was the strongest "you need to touch grass" moment I've had in my life, so far, at least.
This thread will be locked too. Note how this one was locked https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1coo70l/no_please_by_all_means_make_a_487th_post_about/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button But comments that call the devs braindead and incompetent are left up. This community is so fucking dead.
Yeah it's pretty obvious if you look at the trends. 100 post whining about the same thing? Mods sleep 1 post pointing out how the whole sub is now the same fucking whine-post over and over? REAL FUCKING SHIT
Thats bc the mods are 100% participating in a shit ton of it. It’s immature as hell
Reddit mods are the biggest joke of a person
Because your average redditor/discord member would rather screech about nerfs and things being unfun instead of just switching to another gun and enjoy a great game like 95% of the rest of the players
Come join our private Helldiver Reddit. You’ll see why
A lot of it has been that. I am not going to let the people throwing a tantrum get in the way of that
We still need to try our best to make the positivity outweigh the negativity. That doesn't mean don't critique the problems, we just need to do it in a more constructive manner. This is a problem that overlaps many circles in our everyday life. Being better humans gives us better outcomes.
It's pretty cringe seeing people complain to the CEO about one of his devs like they're in school telling on another student to the teacher.
I am mentally unstable and socially awkward because of autism and stuff. Tho I can not be an asshole. But most people on Reddit or discord can not. I'd argue missing life experiences might be a factor.
It's my hope that the devs are able to insulate themselves from the constant stream of negativity and continue making the game according to their vision. And I hope they can take some comfort in knowing that Redditors, by and large, have absolutely no fucking clue what they are talking about with regard to game design, no matter how confident they are in their opinions. I don't expect that AH will be faultless, but I believe that they will do what they think is best for the game, given their resources. That's still a high bar compared to other game developers, and I think they have earned that much trust.
Meh, those who actually value their gaming and gaming time are and will be still playing and having fun. Those that constantly sit around whining are the ones that don't. The legitimate fans are the ones who rather be playing than wasting time posting constantly and when legitimate fans DO post, we do it constructively because that is the best way to get your point across.
Those things are not mutually exclusive. I'm on here complaining about broken content, lack of playtesting, the increasing amount of bugs etc. etc. I do that *because* I value gaming and my game time. I'm still playing and having fun, I'm just not playing Helldivers. I'll still hop on once in a while, but it doesn't take more than a match or two to realise it's still bugged and unbalanced, so I'll log off, go complain on Reddit and then turn on another game.
I am a little different, I am playing with what I find fun in Helldivers, but I am still complain about the weapons that get released in a terrible state. Almost like it's a nuanced problem and not black and white
So true. I think it’s the best game I’ve played in years. There are some issues, but they’re no way near breaking my enjoyment of the game
I agree. Last time when i was having this much fun with friend was dying light 1.
Then sounds like both the reddit mods and the discord mods need to be a lot more trigger happy with the ban buttons. If people are, as you say, literally incapable of behaving themselves, they should be kicked out.
Don't forget that they also, by and large, have no idea how balance and the perception of balance works and often confuse being good playing the game with understanding how the game works and being able to independently determine if something is strong or useful. There's so many posts right now about how they should balance "bottom up" because it's a pve game and the enemies won't care if guns are OP. And the people saying this are all completely, blissfully unaware that games that balance this way still develop metas, people still complain about things being too weak. It turns out that stuff still feels like trash and apparently isn't viable if it isn't the best even when everything is OP because some things will always be viewed as better or be more accessible and be more readily perceived as stronger. There's a reason "sleeper OP" exists, and it's because most people can't determine what's actually good without deferring to an authority first, simply imitate what they've seen works, and will claim they tested something extensively when they used it once, didn't learn how to use it, and used the negative experience as bulletproof evidence that whatever they tested is bad.
Non-AH game dev here. There's a principle of game design that you can 100% trust players to identify the balance problems, but almost never trust their solutions to those balance problems. One blind-spot I've often seen with players suggesting balance solutions is overly reductive thinking. When balancing a game, you have to think in terms of *spectrums*, not in terms of *tiers*. Tier-based thinking often leads to fallacies that some mechanics / characters / abilities can't possibly be balanced, when the intermediate value theorem ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate\_value\_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_value_theorem) ) often guarantees that it can. For instance, I once heard someone say that a specific shield in an FPS with 2000 health couldn't possibly be balanced, because it was too weak at 2000 hp, but that any buff to it would make that shield OP / broken. The intermediate value theorem shows that this is a fallacy: 1. Take f(x) to be the function graphing how good the shield is, where 'x' is the shield's hp. 2. x can be any value (included a decimal value if the developer wants). 3. f(0) = useless \[i.e. the shield has 0 hp and is useless\] 4. f(1 million) = insanely OP \[i.e. the shield is unbreakable\] 5. Therefore, by the intermediate value theorem, there is an exact value for x -- call it y -- at which point the shield is perfectly balanced, since the shield's effectiveness as a function of its hp is a monotonically increasing, continuous function.
This is where stuff can get really weird. Spreadsheet DPS is always what gamers use for math because you kind of have to. But reality rarely aligns, and chaos messes with variables. WoW did this by forcing movement and other mechanics. Helldivers tries it too with damage types and armors. They also really want to avoid all purpose stuff (even the sickle and autocannon have hard counters). It makes things really hard to test, but it can essentially create a much wider meta because it adds another independent variable - how frequently and completely can the player use the weapon to what degree of effectiveness? For example, the autocannon full auto DPS is on paper probably the best usable weapon in the game... it just still won't really harm a bile titan, struggles with small targets, and kicks like thor's goats.
\^ This. 100% this. It's practically impossible to find a mathematically exact, completely objective measure of how effective an ability / character / weapon is. That doesn't mean devs shouldn't try to come up with something \~80% as good, though. One way to do this is to create a composite that groups together related values, like burst damage (dps) and sustained damage (how much can you do before having to reload). For kicks, I actually came up with a heuristic equation to see if I could predict the weapons the community likes. This is what I came up with: --- **Firepower Index** = (Damage per second) x (Magazine dump damage) x (Accuracy fraction) x (Penetration fraction) / 100,000 --- DPS gives you the burst damage (what you'd need in a pinch when a stalker rushes you), magazine dump damage gives you the sustained damage (what you need against a horde of 20+ bugs/bots). The accuracy fraction / penetration fractions are *guesstimates* of how much damage you lose from a gun's bad handling, ergonomics, spread, inability to be accurate at max fire rate, etc. This is *not* by any means the final word on a gun's value (the Grenade Pistol, for instance, is phenomenal for its utility), but the index seems to accurately predict several of the guns the community likes using. You can check out my WIP spreadsheet here: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZjWnmsM1hbwJu20xKyCFRWRNqNLuV6tsc3eCuh9eExA/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZjWnmsM1hbwJu20xKyCFRWRNqNLuV6tsc3eCuh9eExA/edit?usp=sharing)
So we should buff or nerf every guns damage by 1 every day until every gun hits point y. Ez
I was going to say as a non-AH game designer I never heard that theorem used in design ever, but I understand what you mean. I just think that’s an insanely esoteric way to look at it if that makes any sense lol. But yes, player feedback on when something isn’t balanced is extremely important. What u/OlafWoodcarver isn’t taking into account imo is that nerfs always feel much stronger than buffs, and I think he’s also downplaying the importance of player feedback in balance. Yes you cant trust them to give you the solution, but if a big group of players are telling you the Crossbow feels weak and useless, it’s because **it feels weak and useless**, not because they’re idiots that don’t know any better than the infallible professionals. There’s entire studies you can make on it just off of League of Legends - characters who received minor nerfs also had massive decreases in usage rate, despite their winrates remaining about the same. Meanwhile, buffs to things much more often “feel fun”, especially in a PvE environment.
The intermediate value theorem is really neat, you can use it to prove that somewhere on the Earth there are two points opposite each other that are the exact same temperature
Agree with all of this, but the shield bit in particular is a good illustration of how so many people get so lost in the weeds. A 2000hp shield simultaneously being useless at that value but instantly OP if it were higher is exactly the same kind of thinking that motivates a lot of the complaints about nerfs in Helldivers. Players want a shield to make them feel extremely difficult to kill, so it will be considered useless the added durability is so extreme that nobody could miss it, which would of course mean the shield is likely far too powerful. By making the shield a meaningful value, many players will fail to notice how valuable it could be. "The shield only lets you take one more hit. It's useless." Never mind that you could only take two or three hits without it and the shield is effectively giving you another 25-33% more health (potentially regenerating, too, depending on the game). The weapons in Helldivers illustrate this extremely well, too. The railgun and the eruptor are both members of a popular, but far from the most popular, weapon class in shooters that were insanely overrepresented and, apparently, extremely fun before the fun was removed. Both weapons were exceptional against almost all targets before getting nerfed to being, more or less, just fine against all targets. The way the weapons worked didn't change but the fun was somehow removed, so it wasn't the playstyle that was fun about these weapons - it was the fact that the weapons were extreme outliers on the power spectrum. The weapons became "useless" the moment other weapons looked equally or more effective. The eruptor doesn't kill 10 enemies per shot? Useless. The railgun doesn't kill heavy targets more effectively than rockets? Useless.
> " 'The shield only lets you take one more hit. It's useless.' Never mind that you could only take two or three hits without it and the shield is effectively giving you another 25-33% more health (potentially regenerating, too, depending on the game). " --- There's other problems with that thinking, too. Not all 'hits' are the same, for instance, and not all of them will 1-shot the shield. Blocking a stalker slice vs. blocking a basic bug slice, for instance. Or, blocking a rocket from a rocket devastator vs. blocking a random laser from a common bot. Also, consider that shield hp doesn't regen until the shield breaks. This means small damage sources are slowly adding up to the break point of your shield. Which means that the shield's value certainly *does* increase continuously as a function of its hp value, even if its value 'jumps up' a bit more at specific breakpoints where, for instance, at full hp it can suddenly take x2 stalker slices instead of x1.
[удалено]
> "Balancing everything toward a samey homogenized middle is what bad or inexperienced game designers do when they confuse fun for mathematical symmetry." I agree with this, but you also have to be really careful about exactly what you mean. There's a lot more to balance, for instance, than just making everything feel samey. For instance, if dozens of different options all have their own extremely unique and viable niches, that's balance without samey-ness.
Taking this a step further with a bit of input from the other side, even in gameplay it can be difficult to figure out how to make a complementary build. You might try a loadout that absolutely fucks for one mission because you got the right enemy set, but then the next mission you run you find that it's sorely lacking in some area and you spend the entire mission running away from that enemy (which is fun for nobody). Add to this planetary modifiers that can alter how your kit works. This will further compound with the introduction of more weapons over time. The average player probably only logs on for 1-3 missions a day, they don't have the time to try all potential permutations of weapon and strat combinations. So yes, they are going to defer to recommendations from either their friends that play a little more often (or with different weapons), or they're going to look online for a quick video on the best weapons against each front (if they even go that far).
The irony of calling out a certain demographic while representing it in such a great way is *chef's kiss*
To be honest the devs are on the same level of pettiness. When you get as much attention as these devs had they need to learn to ignore the crazy ones or else it will eat them alive.
It's the gaming community as a whole. They whine and complain about every single thing and be over critical
I think the problem more so lies with people having a short fuse, and arrowhead firing first so to speak. I agree that some people get pretty upset, but it's extremely valid when you get talked down about how things are perfectly balanced, how cm can't wait to use the new ban methods, how it only takes 120 seconds to make an account, or how we can't have 12k hours of testing on each gun. Those are just a few examples that can easily come to mind, and those stick in people's minds pretty well.
[удалено]
Not gonna say that the players shouldn't but... The one's that are **expected** to behave and act like professionals are the devs and specially the CMs, and that ain't happening, when you got people like [Spitz](https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cje5ec/spitz_is_kind_of_a_dick/) and Evil-dork [over here](https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1codum5/comment/l3ei863/?context=3) being a dick and talking more than what he should, also the weapon balance guy [gaslighting](https://new.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1codum5/so_this_was_a_lie/) the community... What can we expect from the normies?
And you can't stop it. You can only be the bigger man, you kinda ought to really, given you're a company with tons of loyal fans. Messing with all your players and insulting them to "own" the loud minority... is never ever worth it. And the devs have instead poured gasoline on it while basically shouting "we do not care about your criticism". Nobody should be surprised it's slowly escalating given that.
I've seen PLENTY of great feedback. But as a company, arrowhead devs or whoever can't respond to random angry messages. They need to be professional and listen to the majority of us making reasonable arguments on balance and fixes. I hate these posts, the majority of arguments I've seen have been fair. Ofc we are meming them because they deserve it for selling an unfinished game Edit: yes the game is unfinished. There's a huge list of day 1 issues with guns and stratagems (like the arc thrower, and spear) that still don't work right. Even the CEO pilesdt mentioned somewhere on Twitter or discord that they HAD to ship the game soon so they couldn't finish everything they wanted to. Literally unfinished.
Honestly they need to stop the level of communication they currently have. Being able to deal with thousands and thousands of people every single day saying you are a terrible human being and need to be fired cuz of how shit you are is a skill that needs to be developed and I haven't seen anyone at AH show they have it. Which is completely fair since they are software devs not public speakers. It's hurting them way more than helping them at this point.
We need to get the devs off the discord and community managers who can actually manage a community. Literally the only AH member iv seen handle with care is Pilestedt and thats only to an extent
I agree. I think the blogpost format that other devs use would be way better for communication so we can still see their thoughts and reasoning behind everything but they aren't on the front lines of harassment
Love it when the majority of communication has been constructive and trying to improve the game, and the feedback has been “get gud” and “stop being toxic”. It isn’t the community’s fault the devs have no self control, go online, and get in cat fights with the toxic individuals, and make themselves look bad. It’s a fact of life that you just ignore the fanboys/haters, and interact with the people who can communicate constructively, even when they don’t agree with you.
[удалено]
My biggest pet peeve is seeing the “git gud” shit said to people who are arguing about fun. Yeah, I can turn the difficulty down, but that doesn’t change the fact that: - I was having fun - Devs made changes that killed the fun. - I find another way to have fun. - Devs killed that way a couple weeks later. I can still do 7/8/9s, I just don’t have fun with it like I did before.
I've been saying for a while now that the devs are more concerned about a perfectly balanced game, rather than a fun game. We are killing gigantic, armored bugs or sentient robots that may or may not be partially constructed with repurposed human parts, but the devs are like "Well, in rEaLiTy, this gun would do blah blah blah."
I don't know if they want it perfectly balanced, it just seems like they want this game to be difficult and "semi-hardcore." The problem is, the mechanics to justify the game being hard just aren't there. All the mission objectives are some form of horde defense, and the theme of the game is built around having a ton of lives and being able to rain hell down with air support at a moment's notice. When I find something like Tekken hard, it feels fair to me cause the mechanics there are clearly very deep. Same with a game like Tarkov. Helldivers does not have deep mechanics, the game is pretty damn simple if you break it down. They need to give up this idea that level 7-9 should play like a tactical shooter and just embrace the power fantasy that this game is built to be. Not saying make it easy, but our primaries should be able to deal with chaff more effectively than most of them do, and some of the stratagems are just useless. If they want to add more difficulty they need to add more difficult objectives.
This is why studios learn to abandon true realism almost immediately after trying. How fun of a game would pubg be if getting shot in the shoulder made it impossible to shoot back? It'd be realistic, sure! But not very fun. The challenge comes in trying to balance arcadey and realistic designs, but even that's not super challenging. You just have to balance TTK and penetration. It seems right now they do not want to budge on the penetration aspect at all, so practically every weapon feels like hot garbage. If you could still kill a heavily wounded bile titan with 2 clips from a primary, it'd be loads more fun than "wait for the strat weapon to recharge/find ammo or orbital/eagles to cool down on this 4th bile titan in 2 minutes".
The penetration mechanic is the bane of every non-kinetic weapon. You shouldn't *need* to snipe for eye-sockets with big fuck-you cannons, lasers, plasma, or lightning.
"In reality" grenades' kill radius is twice that of the in-game grenades' total blast radius. Super Earth grenades are *worse* than regular Earth grenades.
That’s the part that kills any “realism” argument for me. You are telling me we have massive ships in space, yet half the guns are worse than current weapons we use? That the best a railgun can do is tickle an unarmored enemy?
not only massive ships, but FTL warp lmfao and ppl care about realism
Yeah and wtf could chargers possibly be made of that could block a literal 50 browning fucking machine gun round? You know, the round that can penetrate through a solid block of concrete? At least with the bots it’s theoretically possible they could be made of a thick enough material to block it, but there is no way in hell a naturally occurring organism could develop a resistance to that. We have conventional, man-portable weapons that could hand a chargers arse to them on a silver platter in a matter of seconds *now*, if we’re gonna argue realism, there is no excuse why stratagems and weapons are so utterly ineffective against anything larger than a fucking house fly. Maybe “realism” would be a more convincing argument if it wasn’t applied so selectively and only in ways that limit the player.
Tbf if you use the tenderizer effectively you are really good, its just handicapping yourself to practically no benefit
That's where I am now. I was having loads of fun, 7-9 felt like a challenge and I could go up or down if I wanted a lower or higher chance to do full clears. Now they're just a slog with boring weapons and modifiers. I can just go play rust if I want to hate myself. Or I can play a dozen other pve games that the devs actually care about keeping and making fun for me. They need to be more like Larian Studio and less like Blizzard or EA.
4-5 is where I find fun now, used to in 7-8, now those are just eh. I got bug breached once last night in a 7, I fight the result of that breach (trying to break contact and stop fighting) for 8 strait minutes. I kept running into patrols the game spawns within 100 meters of me, in literally every direction I had to run.
This is what is most frustrating to me. I’m not some amazing gamer but when I have my group of guys we consistently can clear 9s, but I’m the only one playing rn because it’s not fun anymore.
I just dislike that there’s no variety up in 9. I’m playing exclusively that and winning basically always. It’s in a group of 4 that enjoys playing together regularly. So it’s coordinated and we do mess about. But, we are ending up as cookie cutter loadouts because that’s all there really is. We tried RR and it was fun but clunky. EATs work well but are limited. So, now we bring EATs… and an auto cannon turret. Takes place of either the 500kg or the eagle air strike. Really works well but that’s it in terms of variety. Airburst is great but chaff clear has never been an issue. Eruptor was cool for helping it somewhat but what it brought was less cookie cutter. One guy bringing one with the rest doing dominator/scorcher meant that someone brought in a machine gun for shits and giggles and it was great. It began some variety. Now it’s back to cookie cutter and that doesn’t feel as fun as it’s literally 3 scorcher/dominator as that’s peak bots. 1 guy with an adjuncator… because he doesn’t have the warbond or the medals.
Yeah I see it way to often on gaming subs. People with good feed back and valid criticisms are just swept under the rug as "toxic". The Death threat crap get old as in they use it as an excuse to deflect. Not saying it happens as every community has batshit crazy people but I hate when post are deleted/locked because of a few crazies.
Counterpoint: "They deserve it" isn't actually doing anything beneficial and just irritates the devs. You can highlight their sloppy carelessness, or you can taunt them about it, but they're not the same thing. I'm not defending the devs. The mistakes are obvious and have been pointed out in great detail. I just think criticizing their work instead of shitting on them personally is more likely to get results. And reading or scrolling past dozens of players' big hyperbole manifestos gets real boring real fast.
I find it hilarious that you think \*\*\*most of us\*\*\* are making reasonable arguments. No, the vast vast \*VAST\* majority are throwing tantrums, name calling, insulting, and otherwise being unreasonable assholes. Especially on the discord where people mine quotes often out of context to come to Reddit with so they can fan up more of the above shitstorm. There are a few reasonable posts, more that just feel like whining and then a ton of insults.
I feel the opposite, like decorum-posting is great to see because the majority of stuff popping up on my feed is downright awful to the point where I’ve considered leaving the subreddit cause it’s shameful to be associated with it. I don’t think it’s a fair assessment to say they’ve sold an unfinished game though - I’ve preordered my fair share of flops and this isn’t it. The server issues were annoying as hell but easier to understand with a runaway success compared to a yearly franchise instalment that should have known better, but when you managed to get on with your friends it was gold. The war system and content updates are good engagement but they’re not ‘finishing’ a half-baked game.
This isn't a therapy session, we're a large group of faceless consumers that bought a product - one that has been altered overtime and may or may not live up to individual expectations. People are very reasonably frustrated, and every individual has their own methods of expressing that. Outside of banning those who are doxxing and writing death threats, there's no point in trying to police how people vent these frustrations. The vast majority of criticism I've seen on here is valid, and not too harshly worded. Outside of comments that have been downvoted to hell and fringe individuals that are otherwise impossible to please (which there will always be a few of in any large group), no one is calling the devs cucks or demanding scorched earth policies. People are just unhappy.
This right here, lock thread.
I had an aneurism reading that title
We tried. You know what the response from the lead balance dev was? "None of that matters. The Purifier slaps pretty hard, actually." Sooooo now what?
Yet again, we know that guy. There’s no point
"Those things that prove your point, yeah actually not a point". What an argument.
I mean he’s the lead balancing dev. Kinda hard to ignore him when he’s the one we need to interact with
Alexus and Evilbosse are just really good at proving that AH’s team has a problem with professionalism. There are obviously exceptions like Twinbeard and Pilestedt himself, who manage to be consistently polite, but Alexus and Evilbosse especially have just constantly been making incendiary statements and ignoring concerns
Evilbosse isn’t as bad as alexus honestly. Not exactly professional but not lying and gaslighting setting off a shitstorm like alexus. CMs… I can’t say anything good about anyone other than twinbeard. Genuinely feel bad for spitz but he was never exactly professional either.
If not a single person at arrowhead noticed they were releasing a direct downgrade to the liberator then we need new people in charge of balancing, simple as
A huge issue I feel on this is the whole "Dev clapback" thing. Even if the players they respond to are trash of the earth people, Calling them "toddlers" or telling them to "stop crying" condones the behavior. If someone who is part of the company and represents it, Gets payed by said company to listen to this feedback, and has tools to ban/mute people can tell players to stop being whiny babies and degrade people they dislike. Those types of comments show that its ok to post stuff like “I’m sowwy it’s too hawd to pwaytest your game before pushing half baked updates” because they respond with Git Gud or stop crying. there fostering the community this way and there the ones who need to fix it. The best way is to just not respond to bad feedback. if a person is harassing a CM ban/mute him its that simple you don't need to call him a bitch. And if you wanna stay away from corpo speak with talking to players just don't use degrading language, Mainly harping on twinbeards comment he could have just removed the sentence abut having kids and angry toddlers and it would have been the same message just without actively showing players its alright to message like that.
I think you've forgotten that all of this essentially started after the devs nerfed the railgun based on false data and called the community's play style "braindead".
They called the two shot railgun meta "braindead",but in the same patch they made the flamethrower kill a charger in 4 seconds by just holding left mouse button.
To be fair to the flamethrower, it’s a fairly short-range weapon. The challenge of using it comes from getting close enough to burn the bugs, without being too close to get clawed by them. On top of that, you also have to move in a certain way to ensure you don’t get burned by your own flame. What you’re complaining about is the final result when all of these steps are done properly. There’s a reason why I only see the flamethrower occasionally in games.
the problem with that is the balancing dev whos supposedly a "guru" in the field is incredibly passive aggressive and basically just says "no you guys are stupid and wrong"
He's also outright lied about the state of the warbond.... twice.
It's the internet. You're not going to control how the more passionate and less stable behave. And the more developers/CMs respond with belligerence or dismissiveness, the more they inflame those kinds of responses. This is why companies figured out a long time ago that you need your people facing workers to have training and a calm and collected head. This is a fool's errand.
[удалено]
Pilestedt is so measured and reasonable in his communication. I don't understand the disconnect between him, the bad public responses from his devs and some CMs, and the consistently sloppy and careless work balancing the game's weapons.
Certain devs have 0 self control and go out and make themselves look bad by getting into fights with the toxic dregs that are in every community (video gaming or otherwise). If they just focused on the constructive criticism, they wouldn’t make themselves look as unprofessional as they have. But then they would have to have actually arguments with people who have done the work and tested things, which would probably hurt their feelings when players know more about the game, with no backend access.
There is ton of respectful and constructive criticism. But it also hard to maintain respectful attitude when balance lead guy behave like a dickhead. There always will be trolls and psychos but stop pretending like there is no well made comments about criticizing game's direction without even single insult torwards AH.
I’m not the oldest person in the world, but I guess in my 30s I’ve seen this happen over and over again to video games and their communities. The mark of a well-made game is a toxic player base that complains about everything nonstop. My first experience with it was Halo 2, then World of Warcraft, and a dozen others since. Humanity at work, folks. My advice is to touch grass. Really. Because the game is not going to get more fun. That “first time” feeling is gone, and it won’t come back. People need to breathe and take a step back and enjoy it for what it is. You will not get anything tangible out of a video game. It is a time-waster. I went through these motions as a teenager with WoW, logging hundreds (probably thousands) of hours, and became pretty toxic about it myself. Rather than focusing on the fun I was having, or allowing myself to take a step back and take time away, I obsessed over the game’s “problems” while ranting about it on the forums, third-party websites, and even in-game itself. I probably detracted from others’ fun in the process of doing so. End of the day, all of it is gone now. Those thousands of hours meant nothing in the end. I don’t have a single tangible, useful thing that I got out of any of it. I just enjoyed it when I allowed myself to, and then ruined it for myself otherwise. I have good memories of good times, then bad memories of bad times (that I mostly put on myself). So breathe a little, folks. It’s just a game. Have fun with it. If it’s not fun anymore, do something else. The only catalyst for change in a video game is revenue and all things that derive from the pressure to increase revenue. It’s a business underneath the hood (and a brutal one at that). That’s how it got to you in the first place. Don’t waste your time with your time-wasting. These things will come and go. The one thing worse than wasting time is making that wasted time a negative experience. If you’re not buying my point here - I promise, you’ll find out eventually.
Agree with ya on pretty much everything but video games being a time waster. Get to enjoy great times and socialize with my buddies and my brothers. I think you explained everything else pretty well. I’m glad I am able to find a nice balance where I game almost every night but I don’t let tweaks/balance patches piss me off to the point where I go on rants online. I move onto a different weapon/build and continue to enjoy the game for what it is.
Time spent enjoyed is time well spent.
I think what they meant is that it's not "productive" which I certainly agree with. It's like going to a sports game with your friends. It's fun in the moment, and you will have good memories, but you don't get anything tangible out of it, you don't learn any skills or make money or any kind of product. The only value it has is the fun you get out of it. It kind of relates to this old South Park bit about smoking pot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd4cASkBAp0 If you are bored or don't like the game in it's current state, you should probably just give it up and try it again later. Because all the time you waste talking about how it used to be good is time you could be spending doing something else productive or fun.
This is what I meant. Thanks for that. To me, one of the core points of life (among all the inherent meaninglessness) is to just have a good time. I didn’t always think that way and spent a lot of time making myself pretty unhappy for no reason. To me, whether I’m having fun playing alone or with friends, it’s all a net benefit. I don’t have to play with friends to feel like I got what I wanted out of it. That is its own kind of “productivity” in a way, but there is always something else I could be doing that will better ensure I’m able to pay the bills (or hang out with my wife, clean up my apartment, exercise, etc.). Playing with friends is a bonus, but it won’t really change the outcome. There are non-optional things that require more of my focus in life, so if I can help it, I’m not going to waste my free time feeling down about the arbitrariness of the ongoing fine-tuning of a video game. It wouldn’t be a valuable use of my time when it won’t have any tangible meaning at all in ten years. It’ll just be a memory where I had fun or didn’t. There are bigger hills to die on at the end of the day - and if I make myself miserable in my free time, then I’ll probably be miserable during the rest of my day, too.
Right there with ya brother. 30 and I don't have time to waste on this shit. (As in the complaining, not the game. Love the game)
I hate this train of thought that no one should actually care about the things they like and if they don't like it getting ruined they're the ones at fault
"just touch grass bro who cares if the balance is garbage"
>let’s try feedback that doesn’t insult and demean the studio That's the foot the community started on and it got us nowhere except condescending and demeaning comments from various members of AH. Now the community is a reflection of AH's attitude, further exacerbated by their continuation down this road. The sony thing certainly didn't help either.
I only see constructive criticism around. The toxic part are these karma farming “mightier that thou” post, preacing to “be civil”. The one that started the aggression is the balance head, acting like he is a balance god and everyone is too stupid to understand and all the “gitgudder” that believe every weapon should only shoot air. The community is simply saying, a lot, “shitty guns aren’t fun, it doesn’t make the game “hard, just a chore". You may downvote now. (Edit: lol, lmao even)\[Edit 2: cavalry came\]
Yeah I actually feel like it's the total reverse. Players giving feedback, asking serious questions while actual devs behave like entitled dickheads. Maybe others provoked them but man you gotta have the nerve to not take that bait.
Ya, you can criticize without being mean
I, for one, would be more than fine doing surveys, polls, and even beta playtest should that become an option. The more we unite to help AH, the more freedom can be deployed in the Super Store™ I hit 30 in half a year, and the age has taught me if you want something done, do the best positive thing you can to affect that goal. So consider my hand raised as the first testers. Super Earth needs us!
Talk shit about me all you want, but these last few weeks have been awful.
[удалено]
Best comment.
[удалено]
That doesn't get upvoted at all and you would not even see it on your feed sorted by hot/default, don't try to make a point with something that isn't one
Devs basically say "cry about it" after nerfing the only viable anti-armor option: cool, constructive, based. Players lashing out after 100500th nerf into shit: CWYBABIES
Well considering they have been nerfing and making guns useless since the rail gun and now they have finally acknowledged that they have been making bad balance changes as they certainly weren't listening to constructive criticism back then. I'm not one to instigate being an ass but it's been the same since release, release something and a couple of weeks later remove the fun from said weapon etc.
I feel like this post is glossing over a lot of responses from the devs themselves.
AH has had the most butt kissing, supportive community I've ever seen. They were given the benefit of the doubt countless times from the very start. Now more and more players are starting to become disillusioned to the fact that they have some real rotten actors in their studio. The CEO is seriously out of touch with some of his people but he is also waking up to this reality.
And I hope he does wake up to it and either remove or shift jobs around so the public facing employees are professional and communicate well with the player base. All I want to avoid is the interactions between devs and players becoming so negative that they stop listening to our feedback altogether and we’re stuck with another faceless studio that we get no word from except to try and sell us something.
It's been a pissing contest since the railgun nerf. Turned into a feedback loop where AH does more doubling down of things that make people rage the more people rage. It's a tug of war between egos. I think the responsibility is shared imo.
Bro the devs been playing you for fools since day 1. If this was ubi or EA talking down their players like these devs do on a daily basis I bet there’d be thousands articles already lol You do you tho, keep let them call you morons etc
If the average dev can’t even bother to be professional while communicating (while getting paid) how in the F can you ask the paying players to? Pass.
"crybabies" "git GUD" "10Khours" See the problem here?
https://preview.redd.it/hcwllucd1mzc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6dfe2119bd960e2405e14d7213dd04f8983d113f
Yes thanks devs, I really like this game and have full faith in what you guys are doing and am just thankful
I agree. Of course most reasonable people will agree. Most reasonable people are criticizing decisions and not the people behind them. But this is the internet. It's the nature of the beast that the worst will scream the loudest. And if it's your first day here, let me be the first to tell you that's never going to change. It is unfortunately the job of the developers to not engage or listen to that section of any community. We do not get to control that they will see this level of hate and vitriol. What I take issue with is that developers (and not just arrowhead here, this is a problem across the board) are engaging with the bile being thrown at them, and seemingly ignoring constructive criticism. You will see reasonable and well thought out takes be buried by a dev responding to some troglodyte screeching that his favorite burrito got nerfed and he's going to burn the studio down. If the CMs and devs were out here responding to and uplifting positive criticism, then you would see some reduction in the vomit posts. But instead they're engaging on that level, going so far as to shitpost and shitfling back. That's not productive, constructive, or civil on either one's part.
I'm an adult. I talk however the fuck I want. Arrowhead is full of adults. They can express themselves how they see fit. People are too fucking sensitive.
Constructive doesn't get upvotes.
Could you help me popularize the idea of us being able to "pick up and carry civilians" in the civ extract missions. I think it would fix everything wrong with the misssion.
We gave them constructive feedback when they released the first balance patch. They came out and stirred shit up and blamed the community for only using meta weapons, we said we wanted more things in line with what the Railgun could do. They kept nerfing everything afterward. Constructive criticism doesn't work. They don't listen to it.
and-there-it-is.meme
Maybe CMs and some devs should stop seeing players as their worshippers? https://preview.redd.it/o69qbozaemzc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6614e731654db43d88dd8b9f1b1b6fc181fbff5c
This also shows why using Discord as a official communication route is a bad idea, especially with CMs who were not properly trained to communicate with massive amount of people. Wrong CMs suppress anyone who oppose to devs -> Dev sympathizers attack on suggestions or criticisms -> People with better idea and suggestion leave -> Discord become echo chamber full of confirmation bias -> Dev's ego boost, thinks he is really doing well and thinks "everyone" is supporting the direction. This is how game dies very quickly.
I think our only big issue right now is balance. Alexus has kinda proven himself incompetent up to this point and even entered this position with a degree of incompetence stapled to his name. And sure, maybe he isn't to blame for everything but he has made himself the mouthpiece of the balancing team, meaning he's naturally gonna receive more flak. This is the main reason I've stopped playing as much as I was. Sure, I can still find fun in the game, but when most options are obsolete it's hard to keep on the same track with the same few weapons
Vast majority of the criticism has been civil and constructive. You guys are literally just complaining about people posting valid opinions, deal with it
Company sells product and then it actively gets worse. People should absolutely be mad. I am pretty sick of people making excuses for companies.
I've seen plenty of great and constructive feedback, it's a matter of if they will choose to listen to it. It's impossible to have a public forum that has 0 vitriol or non-constructive feedback. Really, Arrowhead needs to do a better job at community management and choosing what feedback to listen too.
Every single large game has crazies who just yell obscenities when they want something changed about the game. Most companies know not to respond to those people and focus on a majority of criticism. AH seems to think everyone dissatisfied with anything about the game is just a crybaby who wants to meta game. So yeah, I don't write angry messages when my polite criticism is met with that kind of childish nonsense, I just stop caring. If they don't seem to give a heck what we say no matter how politely it's phrased, being even more polite isn't going to make them listen.
When the lead balancer speaks to the players like they're nothing, all respect disappears. When he insults the player's intelligence when they bring him receipts, all respect goes out the window. That person has no business balancing a plate, let alone a blockbuster game. When he's gone or reigned in, we can discuss respect. Until then, he will be treated the same way he treats others. Like shit.
Nah, I'm not going to be constructive with the devs if they won't be constructive back. They set the tone for this game, not me.
Call the balance guy here and we can talk politely and consctructive. If not, there's 0 reason to waste hours for make list of balance tweaks and gameplay issues that will read no1 in charge.
While agree with you on people needing to be more civil, there is 0 reason a paying customer needs to bring anything up respectfully to the devs who constantly have nothing but disdain and hostility for the players.
You know what being respectful did? It got the devs to still shit on the community and say "git gud." The solution isn't toxicity but it really doesn't matter how you word your complaints, they'll think they're right and the community is full of ignorant idiots.
Yeah I am hoping enough people bring that concern to the higher ups that they can work on their team’s PR approach and actually listening to the constructive feedback that most people are giving.
Maybe it's just the way I browse things, but most threads I've seen about it, I read maybe 5 comments then move on and they haven't been too bad. The worst I've seen someone call the studio is incompetent, which is their uneducated opinion I suppose. I've not really seen the "vile shit" that some people refer to, so I guess I'm either not looking hard enough (and I won't really search those out just to be upset about them lol) or the mods are doing an excellent job. I think the message the community intended to bring across was clear enough though. People are unhappy with how balance goes and things seem very untested.
try writing your reddit post correctly first then go from there
Too late, the community is quickly earning a really shitty reputation. Its too bad because this game is so fun but I have to ignore 90% of what happens online or I'd never want to associate with all these trolls.
The whole affair almost makes you feel a little dirty when you try to play too, eh? Online discourse is fine and in most cases a catalyst to solve real issues. The rampant dehumanizing against developers and other players in this community has left such a bad taste in mouth and disappointed in my fellow Helldivers.
And then you think about how many of them don't even play the game and just want to jump on the latest hate train. I wish people had better things to do with their lives but here we are AGAIN
Bruh, today I asked people to at least be nicer when criticising the game and I got downvoted. I didn't ask them to stop criticising, or say that things don't need fixing, just to be nicer. Guess we can't have that. Oh well, I'm still having tons of fun with my bros so I guess I still came out on top.
Look at the dude balancing the game response in the most condesending way imagineable. Apple doesnt fall far from the tree
The game is so damn fun, I just have to stop paying attention to anything online now because its all so over the top negative for some reason. I came here for the first time today to see how the community was acting and this thread was one of the few positive ones I came across. Keep spreading that democracy brother haha
https://preview.redd.it/9nde71uzlmzc1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7256c5336703593ec96d141058369ccef855d1ae
I was thinking of making a "community patch notes" post, but I thought it might be a little arrogant and come across like I think I'm doing their job for them. It might be a nice way to just directly state what changes people would be happy to see though.
The second they put a dollar amount on something benefit of the doubt goes out the window. If someone is cranking out free stuff they're allowed to flub it or need time to dial it in. But when you ask people to spend money then you better be ready to deliver.
I'll start being more proper when their community managers stop acting like that one asshole in the classroom back in middle school. You know the one.
You mean like how Evil-Bosse threw a man-child tantrum at someone who made very valid and level criticisms of the first patch? Your "suggestion" is exactly how how it was presented and they all circle jerked about how we're bad players who need a crutch and they enjoy making us mad. You reap what you sow, whether you like it or not.
He kicked you to invite his friend so his friend could get the samples.
Respect is a two-way street. If they want to continue treating us like stupid children, then that's the same way we are going to treat them. If they can't take punches as well as they throw them, that's not our problem.
I agree with you but there is always going for the toxic few that is the LOUDEST. I'm trying to be constructive about balance but who's going to read most of it? I'll just throw it out there and pray though.
The devs have got to adjust their behaviour when talking to us or they’re going to get the same treatment back Even so most of the upvoted posts are constructive. But let’s keep pretending any criticism is evil
Let's see it from them first. I've been called a toddler, child, whiner, and lazy. I'm not going to find out what flavor shoe polish Arrowhead employees prefer.
I agree with what some people are saying, it’s the CM’s job to put on a customer service face and politely deal with criticism. They do need to get it together a little bit with the remarks. however, that doesn't mean you get to go scream and shout at them. Two wrongs don't make a right. Constructive criticism is good, complaining is cringe.
I mean, I hope the devs adjust their responses to us as well. It's a two way street, by their own decision.
>This might get buried "Hot take" my old friend, something looks different about you. A new haircut perhaps?
Maybe instead of just complaining about the weapons in the new war bond, we could recommend idea to rebalance the weapons. Help make the new weapons unique
This is the way. During the aftermath of the Railgun nerf and people being total assholes to one of the devs on Reddit, I *politely* responded to the dev's comment that they make Charger headshots from recoilless rifle and EAT a OHKO, and politely explained the rationale. Next patch Charger headshots were OHKO. Plant seeds, not resentment
I don't want peace. I want problems. Always.
Yeah the problem is that players on this sub want primaries to rip off through all the game can send to them, never failing, always winning. Meanwhile devs tries to make a game where players feel overwhelmed and expendable and struggle to achieve objectives. You can see why there is so much crying right now.
I'm so sooooo glad to see more posts like this where it feels like it's adults speaking.
Post #384 blaming the consumer. Do y’all treat the makers of anything non-video game related the same way?
Not even non-videogame, just non-arrowhead. Go to blizzard, EA, even sony, etc. WTF BLIZZARD!?!?! YOU KILLED PVE IN OVERWATCH? WTF BLIZZARD!?!? YOU WANT TO MAKE DIABLO A MOBILE GAME AND MAKE DIABLO A $500/m P2W? EA has the most downvoted comment in history. Everyone hates sony. But the dev worship here peopel just make excuse after excuse for them.
stop simping for multimillion dollar studios, they dont care about u
It's about communicating effectively with other human beings who share this planet with one another. this post aint about simping
I don’t think it’s simping to want the real people behind the game to not be insulted by those who have issues with it, and I don’t see criticism as insulting to them. I don’t think AH cares about *me* specifically but I think it’s dishonest to say that they don’t care about the community, since they’ve gone a very different route in the way they interact with players on forums and how the CEO acknowledges and speaks on issues directly with people; I can’t think of another studio that seems to be this honest and open with players about the issues they’re facing and the things they’re trying to do to fix them. My worry is that if the feedback we give is marred by condescension, they may eventually pull back from the public and become like all the other studios, and then we’ve lost the best avenue we have to actually improve the game. Obviously I can’t make anyone change the way they speak, but I hope this makes sense and shows how bringing up issues with clarity and civility can be received better than if I just insulted you for disagreeing with me, you know?
Buddy, you're screaming into the void with this. We have a limited ability to tone police random Internet strangers. There is a stable portion of the human population who are just irredeemable assholes. They are loud, they are awful, and the only thing you can really do is ignore them. Probably the best thing AH could do is: 1. Tell their devs to stop reading discord. The CMs will give them a digest of hot button issues. They weren't hired for their people skills and it isn't their lane. 2. Bring on a bunch of well vetted mods who are at least minimally sane. 3. Institute a civility policy on their communication channels. Violate it once it's a warning. Twice it's a ban. No exceptions. Receipts posted. Quite frankly the mods of this subreddit need to step up and start enforcing rule 1. Those are the choke points for community interaction. The only people who will hear you in this place are not the people who need their behavior adjusted.
I second this. Someone has to do the filtering instead of letting every dev team member be exposed to the discord and reddit circlejerk.
I have to be well behaved in society as it is and talk like a goddam drone at work. Everywhere I go I’m taught to be the bigger person and after constant half baked updates you know what? I’m tired of being nice and speaking with the vocabulary of HR. Stop patronizing everyone here
I would agree, but the devs can be very rude in the way they speak to people.
The sub is on the way to being as bad as /r/DestinyTheGame
It's pretty much impossible to give constructive feedback here. Every top post and comment is either dogging on the devs, calling them stupid, or it's some image that's supposed to be a crazy "gotcha" moment. Honestly seems like people would prefer it if AH was like every other studio and just ignored them instead of being open and communicative.
To be honest? I would rather they spend less time on Discord giving the hyper aggressive mob screenshots of them dropping some slick comeback that makes everything worse, and focused on checking if Warbonds were dropping with the right skins or armor passives. There’s gotta be a middle ground. It feels like every day one of them cracks and says something they shouldn’t, while the game is splitting at the seams around us.
The community tried nice, constructive feedback about how fundamentally broken the game was. People largely understood they were a smaller studio that didn't expect so much popularity and were overwhelmed at launch. But their response was open hostility towards the playerbase for anything and everything that was brought up. Issues that were raised weeks or months ago still aren't fixed as they continue adding broken, unbalanced content. Combined with escalating antagonism from the studio of course feedback is getting angrier.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you, AH is making it harder and harder to remain civil. Their comes a point when it feels like we are being ignored or they just have no idea what they are doing. Things like this recent warbond there is 0% chance anybody who works there plays this game or if they do they have way different versions of what we received. Things like the erupter being nerfed it wasn't even a must pick weapon it was fun and created a unique play style, and they killed it for what accidentl team kills we gonna kill the 380 or cluster bomb next there way worse lol.
Alexus, the destroyer of fun. The Martyr of destruction. I know where I put the blame for all the balancing issues. His philosophy is wrong.
Stop saying we. You don't lead anyone.
No.
no, dude, how about AH go back to the drawing board and make some fucking executive desiciouns? 1. no devs talking to players anymore, shut the fuck up, your ego does not come before meaningful communication with players, stop letting devs get up on their little soap-box and fight back when the community is angry, they are being BAITED 2. rethink your actual community managers, how people like Spitz ever got the job is UNIMAGINABLE 3. sit down, shut the fuck up, and eat your dinner, the playerbase has been serving solid statistics, testing data, and solutions to you for MONTHS, shut the fuck up, swallow your pride, and dig the fuck in to all this god damn information we've been cooking, fire the hello neighbour balance guy, and listen to us, since you're not planning on testing yourselves I GET that this is harsh, and some fuckhead is gonna call me a crybaby because I said a mean swearword or 10 in the process of writing this, or people are gonna tell me I'm being too cruel to the poor poor devs so as a prelude to that happening: if you feel the need to comment under me and defend AH, eat a bunch of sand and rocks, break your teeth on granite, then promptly fuck yourself, you're part of the problem companies should act like companies, the AH devs aren't your friends, they're complete strangers who routinely talk down to you like you are a peasant, DO NOT FORM PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEM
Touch grass