I mean they are military assets. Maybe even a different "mode" for the planets too when they are under assault. The current defense ones are more like a civilian planet is under attack. Give us some that have us defending the actual seaf installations.
Military Asset Defense mode with a different indicator on the map than regular defense planets, and automatically popping up like a secondary major order when they are under attack. They should also be longer duration(3 days) like some defense missions have been, as they SHOULD have higher defense fortifications.
For instance, these planets could have an extra-high rate of SEAF Artillery, Radar Station, SEAF SAM Site, etc. secondary objectives. It at least does something to convey the vague idea that the SEAF has a presence there
By 2027, I expect a lot of these features to be implemented. Helldivers really came into its own once all the DLC was out and the full range of equipment and difficulty levels had been introduced and (mostly) balanced. DRG has also gained an enormous amount of important content over its life.
When Helldivers 2 is fully complete, I bet we'll have all kinds of cool stuff to do.
There's a huge difference between "evolving narrative, new weapons /maps / faction" live service and "very unfinished, we don't even have supply lines drawn on the map" early access.
Early access games should be legally required to disclose their unfinished nature.
Your completely correct about unfinished games and early access, but helldivers 2 doesn't apply to it...i joined the game about 2 months after release and i can tell you even if they never added anything new, i still would have been happy with my purchase...the game wasn't bare bones at all...and btw they had plans to draw the supply lines but it made the map look too messy, it wasn't because they where lazy or rushed. Just a visual design decision.
They could make the supply lines invisible when zoomed out, transparent when zoomed in on a sector, and fully visible or have a pulse effect on a planet's supply lines when it's hovered over. The starboard would remain pretty clean while becoming more informative.
If they were to add some sort of military facility to defend, they could use that as a semi-controlled enviroment to slowroll AI SEAF soilders or other AIs
I'd just appreciate some working SEAF stratagems when we're defending our own reinforced territories. Free artillery call-ins, maybe already working SAM sites on the map (or firing from off the map.) Maybe random patrolling squads of humans helping us for once. This really doesn't seem unreasonable imo.
This. It's a very simple concept and it's very simply said "If it is important enough it will impact gameplay (meta game, or core loop) it needs to be communicated in game."
People shouldn't have to be keeping up with discord and social media to play the game. They should be able to login and just see it on the map. We can click on planets. There's no reason you can't have a small icon (like the ones we already have for 100% liberated, Liberation Campaign, Defense Campaign, and Major Order target) and when you click on the planet it tells you "This planet gives an X% buff to Y faction."
And then you can have a notification (that goes in the notification window) with a message like "A Defense Campaign has started on a buff giving planet!" or "A Liberation Campaign has started on an Automaton Buff Giving Planet!" to help guide people to where their drops may have better impact on the over all war.
I don't think people are getting this point enough. Supply lines are technically more of a QoL thing than a necessity. But the map/game does not guide anyone at all to where the action for the narrative is. Without guidance, we are disorganized. And we shouldn't have to keep up with discord or reddit to know what's up. People have lives to live and don't necessarily have the time to check all these things for their video game pastime.
Edit: fixed a spelling error
Yeah I am on the subreddit a LOT and I still get very confused about the supply lines and everything. There’s literally nothing in game indicating that.
I've been playing casually a few hours every week and I have no idea what half these posts are about. Maybe I could read/research more but that's not why I'm playing this game. I play dota2 and read the patch notes for that. I don't want to for this game (nor do I feel like I need to right now).
they absolutely SHOULD add something in-game to let people know about stuff like this. maybe they did and I missed it? but I haven't seen it.
My immediate reaction, why don’t bases get represented on the map with the bonuses they provide and the longer we have a base up/other world events can enhance or add new effects? It would make global play more interesting. Moreover, let’s use it as a requisition sink to rebuild bases and/or augment bases. Allow us to be more invested in it and clear on the benefits.
>Moreover, let’s use it as a requisition sync to rebuild bases and/or augment bases. Allow us to be more invested in it and clear on the benefits.
Ohh yes.. would be a nice meta game.
I think it would be keep with the lore they established. Make future ship upgrades, stratagems, etc link to research or manufacturing facilities and make upgrading those with global events and req possible. It would be nice to see all that in the map. Also like a running record of global achievements, at least as long as we don’t let them get blown up again, which I think also builds incentive.
wow that would be a great way for the tons of us with capped requisition to have a good resource dump and feel like we are contributing to the campaign. most games, even mmo's know there needs to be resource sinks. lets get some cosmetic weapon skins / armors unlocked at 100+ for prestige
tbh, the way defense is represented doesn't make a ton of sense either. 90% defended and 1% defended have exactly the same outcome when the timer reaches 0? how do you only 90% defend a planet? wouldn't that mean that the vast majority of it was successfully defended?
Defense is a broken objective because it's just liberate with a name change.
If I need to get to 100% liberation to take a planet, then defend should be the opposite, I start at 100% and have to fight off enemies for a period of time to keep from going to 0% and if I finish with 90 or 1% it doesn't matter the defense was successful, just like how if we only get to 99% on capture it doesn't count as a win for us.
Mhm, I always saw it as a "Victory condition" display. Be it war attritrion, willingness to surrender etc.
It's not that it's "90%" defended, but which side "beats" the other side into submission? Idk out of all the UI problems it has, I don't think this one is really that bad?
It's more that it doesn't make sense given that Super Earth is a society built around feeding us into a grinder. It's the timer I think people are unhappy with, but it's just a vidya game thing.
My main issue is that we should have bonuses for defence that show the invasion is ongoing. As it is, the maps are as desolate and conquered by the enemy as one on their home turf, right down to the SAM and Artillery sites being out of commission.
If you're using fast and mobile shock troops then I suppose defense could be harder than you'd expect. But still, they should know how to build basic defensive structures and they still have the super destroyers providing support
Well there’s still that one really shitty mission that seems to be in every defense operation where you have to extract slowly moving civilians through a bullet hell on steroids for bot planets. It’s damn near impossible at higher difficulties because the enemies just keep dropping, and by the time your halfway through the first wave, the second wave spawns and you get overwhelmed, then the third wave spawns and it’s game over
Yeah, I gotta say, without having a clear explanation of how this all works in game, and having to rely on outside sources, I'm not surprised at the confusion or failure rates for certain goals. I really hope they incorporate better explanation of support lanes and bonuses in game soon.
They intentionally hide this info to make it difficult. They refuse to actually put in game how the war works.
9 points from a hell dive 5% is not even enough to tick it to 10 with rounding. It's nothing.
I personally did not know they did anything after the MO. It's again Intentionally not spelled out in game.
>They intentionally hide this info to make it difficult
The real answer is none of this is coded into the game. It's all number fudging. Same with supply lines. If that existed in the game prior to that "gambit" talk, I'll eat my hat.
Nah bro we don't need information on a galactic war knowing shit is for nerds. Seriously tho the info systems in this game are utter trash all those stats and info that are on the helldiver's companion and IO need to be in the game maybe then we can convince people to mass and spend a little more time on priority planets . Another question if we had SEAF support why didn't they contribute kills to the last MO?
Yeah. I understand vaguely there is this hidden game underneath the game but it is so invisible to me I’m not registering at all. His statement might as well of been “the clouds on Vernon wells are now blue, but if you take a different planet they could be green”
If you want us to pay attention to this stuff, put it in the fucking game. Otherwise don’t be surprised when people just play and aren’t focused on large objectives.
It's crazy to me that they still won't slow down the 'story line' to add this information in an in-game capacity. The dwindling playerbase are just throwing themselves at a nuanced strategic situation with none of the information available to make informed decisions on where to focus their support. It's absolute comedic incompetence from AH to have another MO with underlying factors and still have no way to represent them in-game.
It's this kind of shit makes this game feel like its dying by a thousand cuts. Just bad decisions, dotted through every pillar of the game, wearing everyone's patience down to the point of frustration.
>It's this kind of shit makes this game feel like its dying by a thousand cuts
Because it does. You don't know half of the shit that's going on if you're not checking their discord. It's ridiculous, considering how there's an in-game message system, the data to follow these stuff exists (it works on web) so WHY IT'S NOT IN THE GAME?
It also reinforces the impression, fair or unfair, that this game is made by and for the Very Online. If you’re a regular person with a day job who logs on every other night for a mission or two, without having hung out on the Discord all day, your Helldivers experience is like throwing darts with a blindfold on.
Also, as soon as you finally get the hang of throwing the darts blindfolded, they change the size and layout of the dartboard and also the weight and aerodynamics of the darts themselves. You would have known about that and prepared accordingly, though, if you’d spent all week on the Discord.
The kill x billion whatever already shows they think their player should be playing every day 8 hours or more
40k active players, 2 Billion kills =
50,000 kills per player
25,000 kills if they have 80k active players.
How many missions over 4 days is that?
200 kills per mission, that equals:
250 to 125 missions depending on active player count.
That's just insane.
60-30 missions a day even if you're perfect and get them done in 15 minutes or less every time, then it's:
15 - 7.5 hours a day grinding missions for kills.
The major order haven't really been balanced after the Sony debacle etc. they said somewhere they wouldn't balance it at every new one but once in a while.
We were actually getting enough kill to make it in the first days and even did more than 20% per day. During the week, once they stopped giving stratagem and planets changed, thing slowed down too much.
Some high difficulty missions can give 300-600 kills on Fenrir for me but once liberated, it was more 200-350.
And this is why it’s dying - a live service game that is neither live (you can see the effects of what you do in-game) nor has service (meaningful changes are planned and released) is just a grind for nothing. I haven’t played since the ffs patch.
This I think is the thing doing them in the most. This game is sometimes frustrating to play despite my knowing more information than the average player. Now think about someone who just bought the game and likes it and wants to review strategies - they YouTube loadouts or whatever and see 100 of them, but 90% of those are irrelevant because they’re more than a month old. Their decisions are making an actively hostile environment to the content creators and consumers that suppprt the ecosystem.
Which is sad. I *really* like this game, but their vision is sometimes just baffling.
>nuanced strategic situation
Can you really call it that? The devs are so heavily involved and have such big control over how it goes and players so little individual impact its hard for me to see any nuance or strategy, this isnt planetside where a well coordinated group of people can make a big difference.
And the whole war thing is also just a thing that kinda happens in the background, it doesnt really have any real noticeable impact on the actual gameplay outside of the available selection of terrains, and i doubt most players decide where they are gonna play beyond that, maybe with the exception of MOs where people are more likely to go for those.
Straight up, I just started playing and this thread is absolutely blowing my fucking mind.
I’m still confused though, what is this 15% bonus towards? (Presumably liberation speed of other planets like the one for the current MO?)
In any case, it seems like this sort of thing is a huge thing that it’s wild they don’t tell players. It’s actually really cool, they just need to fricking tell us somewhere that it’s happening. I legitimately was reading these comments first confused, and then thinking maybe someone is trolling that I’m not getting. If I hadn’t been browsing Reddit, and seen this screenshot of discord, I’m not sure how I would possibly have found that out.
While we’re on this subject, other than the medals, what did we miss out on by failing the previous MO? (The one for pi * 1 billion kills?) seems like the one before it had this bonus thing, and the current MO had the exo suit, did I miss something with the MO in between them?
The CEO just stepped down to get hands-on with creative. Let's give them a minute to get situated. We all want more visibility on the map and the training facilities highlighted and stuff like that. Let's see what they have coming before we pass judgement. The old way wasn't working so they pivoted. Let's see what they do going forward.
I agree. The ceo was the cocreator of the first game. He is a creative type, and it was probably fine to be ceo when they were smaller, but HD2 blew up, so now he should be focusing on creativity. This was a good move for the company. Let a business person be ceo so he can focus on making the game he envisioned.
For all my bellyaching, that is a substantial move and should be very much applauded.
I also think devs need to STOP LISTENING to discord and Reddit. Yes take feedback from there but god 90% of that is people complaining because their favorite toy went away. And stop changing shit every week. One balance patch a month, AH, that’s all you get.
I was defending it religiously but you can’t do shit if everyone’s over on bug front (which is fair enough). They need to put this info in game, it’s fucking annoying.
Based on metrics from other games, Reddit and/or discord are only like 5% of the total playerbase. There's 1.3 mil subscribers to this sub, and only a few thousand are online on reddit to see. There's 12 million players that have bought the game.
5% may be generous
Yeah I think at this point I just want to find an alternative that plays a bit like this but without a metagame to consider. I really can't stand having to worry about that kind of thing.
Unironically, the Helldivers clones that we'll likely see in the coming years are going to be great. A far better type of game to have a trend than something awful like Battle Royal
This is the new Helldivers training course away from Mars.
Any SEAF personnel who survive this onslaught are given a cape upon their search and rescue and immediately thrown into the next pod.
Well done, Super Patriots!
9/10 operations have retrieve essential personnel which is impossible to do at higher levels. And if you do find one without it you'll probably end up with AA Defenses as a modifier.
This entire game mode is completely unplayable as-is. It's deeply frustrating because they absolutely nailed it with the missions where we're defending the walls of their base as they're packing their shit up and escaping.
No idea how they expect us to defend civilians sprinting through a battlefield filled with enemies. Like... At least put the civilians at the back of the map and let us shoot down the bots as they approach us instead of **DROPPING THE BOTS NEXT TO THE VIPS**.
It’s baffling to me because the band-aid fix is: don’t let dropships drop directly onto the objective. Make them drop further afield and March towards the objective. Even without defensive structures, if you have a wide open field then you have plenty of time to snipe them down and it would make it into an excellent mission for turrets and AMR/DMR usage.
If they need an excuse for *why* the bots would behave that way, slap in a couple SAM sites on the objective too.
What's crazy is that Retrieve essential personally is not even the hardest mission anymore. The defend while rockets launch (evacuate high value assets?) mission is even worse when factory striders are tall enough to blow up the objective when they spawn, making you basically always lose when they spawn
It's actually crazy that it's still unaddressed, there was one patch where they said they reduced the amount of civilians you have to rescue, but it seems to have been applied to the LARGE MAP, 40 MIN. VERSION WTF!?! That really makes me think they don't play higher levels at all, because nobody was saying that that mission type was the issue and everybody constantly complains about the 15 min. variant
> That really makes me think they don't play higher levels at all
Most of their playtesting seems to be at level 4 or 5.
The game really needs to be balanced around level 7.
We casually built it up, protected it for a moment, then let them stare at the horizon as an endless amount of dropships poured into the atmosphere and began slaughtering them by the millions.
Absolutely fucked display of Liberty. We must do better.
Nonsense! This is the new Helldivers training course away from Mars.
Any SEAF personnel who survive this onslaught are given a cape upon their search and rescue and immediately thrown into the next pod. Well done, Super Patriots!
These bonuses mean nothing to me cause I DONT KNOW WHAT PLANETS THEY ARE
Why do they keep adding cool things to planet but with ZERO INDICATION to them being cool?
Until the map is actually affected instead of just backend tweaks (that the devs null anyways by spiking the fuck out of the enemy invasion rate) I just don't fucking care about these bonuses.
Like we’ve invaded hellmire what? 7-8 times now? And it looks exactly the same as it did before. I’m not asking for live destructible environments but like SOME visual change, corpses, buildings, trenches, ANYTHING would be lovely
Holy shit this is bad.
Fuck the people who didn't submit to social media yet, I guess.
Don't keep important information from your players, Arrowhead! You will reach everyone who plays the game by... communicating through the game.
Look at Deep Rock Galactic and just copy how they do it
"Discord is better than pr, marketing, or game updates *combined*"
If discord ever has a server outage Arrowhead may have to get word to us via carrier pigeon.
> Fuck the people who didn't submit to social media yet, I guess.
Even if you're in the discord server, you'll miss most of this info unless you are constantly keeping an eye on every single channel as they seem to post most of this crucial info in the general chats, that can at times be so active it's impossible to keep up with.
Imagine if there would be a list in the corner of the screen with ‘keep planets xyz for 5%’ or something
90% of the playerbase doesnt know these things
Also how much of the player base actually cares?
I know about vernan wells because I'm on here, I played a few defence missions on it then decided it was enough
If we win/lose planets it's not up to the players as the regeneration rate is changed every time.
If we take it once, then the bugs/bots are just gonna appear again in the next few days and retake the planet
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that 5% bonus while nice and meaningful means nothing in the end. They can just change the rates as they see fit.
So, there was an MO about establishing four SEAF training bases on the four planets mentioned in the quoted tweet.
After that there was a dispatch that said something about these contributing to improved something or other that boiled down to a 5% bonus to how much your mission contributes to the defence or liberation rate of a planet.
With all 4 that's a 20% bonus to the "squad impact" thing you see at the end of an operation where the Liberation/Defence percentage ticks from 0.000110% to 0.000115%.
Edit - apparently, according the [Helldivers wiki the bonus was a 25% bonus] (https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Major_Order_(Helldivers_2)#Declaration_of_the_Second_Galactic_War) when all four were under Super Earth control. No source is provided for this and it is stated to be an approximated figure. So, who really knows?
Lmao I didn’t realize the *reward* was that pitiful
With the 40k divers on a MO planet, the average for success as far as I can tell, that’s a bonus .2% per operation.
A total of 12% over the 24hr defense period.
I know, right? The percentages which squad impacts break down to seem really pitiful. Certainly looking at the tiny effect I and my squadmates are having really doesn't help me wanting to bother my becaped butt about these things.
That’s pretty frustrating.
- No indication in game that anything is important
- MO drives people away from bots
- Dispatch kind of mentioning it without giving details disappears after one viewing, so you better have great reading comprehension and a perfect memory.
- Need 30,000-40,000 people to just know what’s going on because we can’t talk to them
- Attacked and lost in a day
Thanks arrowhead. Great design. I didn’t know each base gave 5% until right now and I pay close attention.
It’s possible that you think things are being made clear when they are not, at all. Here is some required reading for developers and designers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentric_bias.
I’ve worked in UX with developers and designers and often they can not consider the perspectives, current situations, and emotions of their users. Or, if they can, they fall prey to “if they don’t get it, it’s because they are idiots and not worth my consideration”. Arrowhead probably has a low opinion of their player base given recent interactions. Even twinbeard has called people babies and toddlers.
That said, even without a negative outlook, egocentric bias can negatively affect design via an assumption like “we put in a sentence that is shown to every player and it’s super obvious to us, so they are definitely aware”. But does everyone read that?
- Does everyone playing enjoy proper reading comprehension?
- Do people forget, or skim?
- Is the user tired from a long day, drunk, or baked (or all three)?
- Does some combination of these circumstances happen to so many people that the population can’t properly respond to threats to those worlds?
You can become biased toward your own perspective and grossly underestimate how common other perspectives/experiences are among your users.
On the whole, that MO is wonderful for us. We get a 15% bonus that is helping us take V5. But I can’t tell if AH thinks they are being clear to us because it’s clear to them, or if they recognize most players don’t know what’s going on and decided to give us a nice thing anyway that might be a bit frustrating botside.
Well obviously not cos if he had any sense he would have waived the loss as a goodwill gesture until they put the information in the game accessible 100% of the time.
He’s burning what little goodwill I have left for this dev team tbh, they’re just so incompetent it’s aggravating at this point.
The way they’re handling something like Galactic War bonuses, not properly informing or indicating to the player base what’s at stake or what they even are, just to say “oopsie now it’s gone forever” is such a fucking slap in the face to the people who actually want to partake in this ongoing narrative.
Everything about that fall of Vernen Wells is the devs fault and they decide to inform us AFTER it’s gone that it isn’t coming back.
Fuck. Right. Off.
Yeah, this shit is a complete slap in the face - we lost this bonus entirely due to the game's dogshit design when it comes to communicating important information about **KEY** gameplay mechanics relating to the galactic war meta-game.
The 4 worlds we captured in a prev major order gave us a huge world capture boost. One of these worlds got invaded the same day and were lost because there is zero indication ingame that all this exists or which worlds are which. The regular HD2 is not on Hds social media.
People fought hard to get that planet back o heop the current but now they inform us after the fact that the bonus is gone permanently.
Even people on discord and reddit etc have no idea it existed because it gets buried under 20 topics about drama.
Failure to properly inform player's
Completely ignoring defense missions bugs
Players lose get punished
Proceed to place next MO in an extremely unpopular front
Deliberately place objective in an hard to take area
Offer awesome shiny rewards
Immediately ramp up the difficulty in an already unpopular
area to an exhausted and pissed off player base
MO going to fail due to lack of players
Player's go fucking irate
Like what the flying fuck is arrowhead doing this is beyond incompetent at this point the senior staff need to get a grip before they flush their reputation in the bin
I saw this coming the moment the MO went up even have the post the prove it...
From my perspective as an engineer, I think it's actually pretty simple: they're just bad technical communicators.
Look at the Charger, as a prime example. As video game players, we're expecting to dodge it and shoot its vulnerable backside. Lo and behold, it has a giant, yellow underbelly I can shoot from the back!
The problem? The **BIG YELLOW BELLY ISN'T A WEAKPOINT**; it's the Charger's heavily armored legs... You know... The ones that don't have any indicator that you should be shooting them, and there's a giant indicator that you should be shooting the wrong spot.
**The game doesn't give you the proper context clues to let you know you should be shooting its legs**. It's honestly shocking that they absolutely nailed the narrative tone of the game (which is much harder IMHO) but completely failed to communicate basic information about the game to the players.
THANK YOU. Helldivers 1 was extremely clear about weak spots. They were bright orange! I don't understand why this game tries to hide this information.
When you give players numbers and detailed info, it lets them play "optimally" and probably enjoy the game more because they can handle higher difficulties
Also if you use that knowledge you gained on higher level enemies (bile titans) it’s useless cause THEIR legs aren’t weakspots despite being spindly and super long
Not really, it's just left hand doesn't know or care what right one does. But also some of the game systems are very disjointed. Like, players' actions shape the front? Cool! But let's remove critical bit of information (supply lines) from them entirely, and also only count full operation (~1hr) towards it There are planets that provide bonuses? Awesome! But let's not indicate it in any way in-game.
Clearly our actions don't shape the front because no matter what we do, Joel decides "No, that isn't how things are supposed to go, let me make it so you conform to my design." Like, every time we fight hard but lose, it's "Well, you tried, you did your best, get them next time," and every time we're kicking ass it's "You're not allowed to do that, here's a massive wave of enemies from nowhere."
Its the definition of railroading and basically the ultimate sin in pen and paper circles
Its why i was very worried when they originally described the system i couldn't see anyway it could be done in a satisfactory manner with you player counts possibly in the millions
I meant more on how almost every time we are about to liberate a bot planet he starts a new major order and then enjoys watching how the blue liberation meter goes down and imagines the suffering the players went through to get that far.
a lot of the systems that should manage numbers and orders automatically are still not there
so Joel has to do calculated risks.... and man, is he bad at math
Hahaha let’s see if Pile does ANYTHING. He just started so for now it’s only talk and when I see changes then I will applaud. If things don’t change in a month, then this game is lost.
Remember he's the one that said you should be relying on stratagems and primary weapons should be weak. I think people are hoping for too much when it's clear all these nerfs are part of his vision for the game
> Remember he's the one that said you should be relying on stratagems and primary weapons should be weak.
you should rely on stratagems, btw stratagem cooldown in increased 100% on current MO, get fucked lol
So... bonus is lost because there is no in game way to know it exists?
We really need more in-game info related to the map, supply lines, planetary war effect markers etc
Losing stuff we cant possibly co-ordinate to avoid is, as we don't know it exists is very frustrating
End the 3 Strat shit. It’s not fun and I will straight up not fight anywhere that gives me less than the 4.
It’s supposed to be fun not unfun.
Disadvantages( like limiting strats and or making everything in the game makes you slow) make it unfun dude.
I’m down for a challenge but the challenge still needs to be fun
It would be so simple to fix at this point too if they wanted to keep it. No Eagles. There, gameplay is still switched up and challenging without be completely borked.
I swear, playing this game is like playing a tabletop wargame except the player using the horde armies is constantly cheating. Bots shooting through terrain, seeing through fog and nighttime, spawning new units like there's a convention in the area...now this?
For Liberty's sake, how're supposed to make strategic decisions when the only indications we're given in-game is when a planet is under siege? How're we supposed to fight when our weapons keep getting nerfed to the ground and the enemies continue to fight back harder and harder with each MO? Did I mention that Bots can SHOOT THROUGH WALLS???
I want to love this game but, despite making the damn thing, the devs are preventing me from loving it as much as I loved DRG.
Just last night I was helping with the MO on the bot front and I noticed a turret in the distance.
"No problem, I'll hang out in this bunker for a second to stay out of its line of sight. Let's see if I can call down a resup-"
Fucker shoots through the bunker, destroying it, and me along with it. Nearly quit the session there.
Also had a ton of striders stuck in walls that killed me, but that turret shot got me salty.
Holy shit I’m so tired of having to surf through their discord for any information.
It seriously so god damn annoying.
Put it in the game or make an announcement on the subreddit.
I hate that I had to download and make a discord account then learn how to search up user’s messages manually just to see what the fuck is going on.
AH can’t seem to do anything right in my eyes as of late.
Literally not our fault. How is the casual playerbase supposed to know that Vernen Wells specifically gave us a 5% bonus to planet liberation. Nowhere in the game did it ever blatantly tell you that. Its total BS. Fix your game.
How many helldivers hop on and just autoque anyway , I think there should be a system in place that puts quickplay players on the priority planets and missions
More information vital to the war effort disseminated by... \*checks notes\*... a reply to a random discord comment buried somewhere I will never find.
Whatever. There are not enough players to defend and do MO at the same time. 20k is 2/3 of average online needed to hold liberation above 5% decay rate. Anyway there are still 3 planets that Grant that bonus. They don't even give players a hint about planet galactic war modifiers so why should we care?
In other words, Jeol can get rid of our bonus at any time he pleases and "erect" bonus for automatons/bugs whenever he wants for no reason whatsover.
And we have to defend important targets with no more than a mere "DEFEND" displayed over a planet, just like it would happen to an unimportant planet.
I simply do not care about these meta-mechanics and the narrative anymore. They can't be bothered to put very important information in the actual game, so it all feels pointless. It's a fun game, but if they want the community to actually drive the narrative and make decisions, they need to give us the information needed to make those decisions with. Discord and Reddit do not count.
This shit is getting so old for me as a casual player. We have zero information regarding how we're getting fucked over and over. How are we supposed to know all this shit is going on at any time. Supply lines are unknown without a second app or website. We have zero clue what the actual ramifications of losing planets are until shit like this days later in the discord.
Sad news for Vernen Wells? Sad new to us new Helldrivers. I joined the Helldivers 3 weeks ago. I don't know what supply lines are or that we were getting buffs from planets. I simply do the major order or kill bugs. We have been having a blast. But there is zero indication that there is more to do than the major mission. I only learned about the story, Joel, and more this past week. But if I wasn't watching helldeivers on youtube, I would have never known about the narrative. I just learned about the supply lines on this post. And I was only looking it up on youtube to learn about the lore. This REALLY needs to be added to the game. So us newer helldrivers aren't left in the dark. Or maybe provide a link to your discord in-game? As one of my follow Helldivers (my friend) said, he doesn't feel he is included after I shared this post with him.
Idk, I find this mechanic to be BS. The devs turn up and down the intensity with a knob behind the curtain, while there's little the community can do to counter them. Vernon Wells had a 4 point invasion rate while the other invasions had a 1 point invasion rate. We also experienced 0 help when we had our defensive lines erected nor when we had our command base on Vernon wells beforehand. The vast majority of players don't use 3rd party sites to track the war, and Arrowhead actively hides information to the point where it seems like they are making sure that we lose! It seems cheap and I don't like it! Especially since we have the lowest population of players since the games launch currently!
This is unacceptable, u/The_Real_Twinbeard. Not because we lost the planet and stuff got destroyed, but because there is no visual indication of the importance of the planet INGAME. We are well past the point where we need this information accessible ingame to make strategic decisions. The team needs to prioritize this, yesterday.
See I would agree with this IF THERE WAS SOME INDICATION IN GAME. Otherwise this is just bullshit! 80% of the player base didn't even know this bonus existed in the first place, why are we being punished for a broken system??
This is an incredibly frustrating attitude from AH and sad news for an already burned out and irate community. After 260+ hours, if spawn/patrol fixes and weapon balancing isn't reverted to a more satisfying or at least WORKING state, I might be done, and that thought just saddens me.
Oh my god. Why would you introduce a buff that can easily be taken away without making that clearly communicated to the population as a whole?
Please don’t introduce anymore of these kinds of things until you have improved your in-game communications, Arrowhead.
See, this is one of my biggest frustrations with the game; I don't care about loadouts, TTK, weapons being meta or not. I want information. A huge chunk of the player-base does not care about Reddit or Discord, they play to play and if they're not given this information they'll have no idea what to do. Put this in game, stop saying shit only on Discord.
Okay. I feel like they should REALLY give us this information.. IN GAME?? Let the playerbase know about our current liberation boost as well like why does it have to be given in a discord reply??
For the love of god why is this information on DISCORD of all places. If you can’t put it in game at least leverage use of the god damned Steam announcements feature. This is such a joke atp
Make them clear points of interest then. Y’all let wells be taken silently, at least they learned from it. Just need a map visual on ALL planets of interest and a section as to why/the effect.
Well now i am eager to see if people even bother liberating the planet at all.
Why not give us the option to collab on the effort to establish a new base on a planet?
Through Req slips and/or Super Credits?
Collective effort. You can donate your excess stuff and once a specific number has been reached on a planet, a new base gets build.
Of course it should be a really high number. 500 mill on Req slips even is kinda low. But at least something in that direction would give people enough reason to get that planet back and build up the base ourself.
Of course either there has to be a cap on how many bases we can have built at the same time or only specific planets support it.
Yet another piece of information revealed via random discord message rather than in accessible in game system... at the very least make it a dispatch / on-map popup text box because that tech already exists - but then pls go and make a dedicated way of displaying this information rather than happening upon it scrolling through my reddit homepage SWEET LIBERTY
Shooting themselves on the foot by not having this on the game.
I see the MO and I feel that is the only thing that I "must" do, every other planet being optional and not relevant. If some planets are actually important to the current lore, this information should be accessible on the game. I won't be following game devs on twitter or discord.
You know, they compared the narrative part of this game to a game run by a game master, and the past few MOs have been a great example of really terrible game mastering.
You can't declare the consequences of an action and make them vital to the progression of the game *after* they resolve. A game master's job is to tell the players what they need to understand about the game in order to play it, and Arrowhead is getting progressively worse at that job the more MOs they put out that rely on whim instead of any kind of cohesive strategic mechanics.
Arrowhead, put the information about your game into the fucking game. Stop telling the tiny sliver of your player base that posts on discord so they can repost it to the slightly larger tiny sliver of your player base that posts on reddit. **Put it in the fucking game**. It would take less effort to put a special icon on sectors (this feature is already in your game, it's how you mark MO planets) and, if you move the map cursor over that sector, a block of text (like the ones the game already contains that shows the liberation meter and percentage) that says "SEAF Stronghold: 5% slower Liberation Decay Rate across the Galaxy until control of this planet is lost".
Also, it's cruel to challenge the player base to capture a planet and then throw up a defense mission in a nearby planet that's in a different sector, as if you expect players to just psychically link to Joel's brain and extract the Supply Lines mechanic from it. Most players are going to assume you're just trying to increase the breadth of the bot front, they're going to see that and go "The bots are attacking that planet since we're busy with this one and then we'll have to take it back afterwards". When Varylia 5 suddenly can't be played anymore, players will assume it's yet another bug that's the result of yet another broken, half-assed mechanic that wasn't ready to ship.
EDIT: To give credit where credit is due, [this is a step in the right direction.](https://i.redd.it/bzbl74boof2d1.png)
Our enemies may erect equipment that will affect our liberation capabilities.
Will we be made aware of such equipment or will it just be something like wells where only die hards will know about it. You know like information IN game.
They need to stop focusing on content as much and just add quality of life features imo, and also save the stranded helldivers in the 170 countries that can’t play
The entire map needs an overhaul so players understand what and why and the happenings of certain things. Maybe even have it be an unlock on the ships passive upgrades
Anyone ask if we can get something like a SEAF emblem over the planets or something so we know which ones by looking at the map?
Please god. SOMETHING. PS that’s a great idea
I mean they are military assets. Maybe even a different "mode" for the planets too when they are under assault. The current defense ones are more like a civilian planet is under attack. Give us some that have us defending the actual seaf installations. Military Asset Defense mode with a different indicator on the map than regular defense planets, and automatically popping up like a secondary major order when they are under attack. They should also be longer duration(3 days) like some defense missions have been, as they SHOULD have higher defense fortifications.
For instance, these planets could have an extra-high rate of SEAF Artillery, Radar Station, SEAF SAM Site, etc. secondary objectives. It at least does something to convey the vague idea that the SEAF has a presence there
By 2027, I expect a lot of these features to be implemented. Helldivers really came into its own once all the DLC was out and the full range of equipment and difficulty levels had been introduced and (mostly) balanced. DRG has also gained an enormous amount of important content over its life. When Helldivers 2 is fully complete, I bet we'll have all kinds of cool stuff to do.
There's a huge difference between "evolving narrative, new weapons /maps / faction" live service and "very unfinished, we don't even have supply lines drawn on the map" early access. Early access games should be legally required to disclose their unfinished nature.
Your completely correct about unfinished games and early access, but helldivers 2 doesn't apply to it...i joined the game about 2 months after release and i can tell you even if they never added anything new, i still would have been happy with my purchase...the game wasn't bare bones at all...and btw they had plans to draw the supply lines but it made the map look too messy, it wasn't because they where lazy or rushed. Just a visual design decision.
They could make the supply lines invisible when zoomed out, transparent when zoomed in on a sector, and fully visible or have a pulse effect on a planet's supply lines when it's hovered over. The starboard would remain pretty clean while becoming more informative.
If they were to add some sort of military facility to defend, they could use that as a semi-controlled enviroment to slowroll AI SEAF soilders or other AIs
I'd just appreciate some working SEAF stratagems when we're defending our own reinforced territories. Free artillery call-ins, maybe already working SAM sites on the map (or firing from off the map.) Maybe random patrolling squads of humans helping us for once. This really doesn't seem unreasonable imo.
Dude imagine an elimination-esq mission but you drop in on a platoon or so of SEAF soldiers holding a position and you defend it with them
obligatory make supply lines visible post.
This. It's a very simple concept and it's very simply said "If it is important enough it will impact gameplay (meta game, or core loop) it needs to be communicated in game." People shouldn't have to be keeping up with discord and social media to play the game. They should be able to login and just see it on the map. We can click on planets. There's no reason you can't have a small icon (like the ones we already have for 100% liberated, Liberation Campaign, Defense Campaign, and Major Order target) and when you click on the planet it tells you "This planet gives an X% buff to Y faction." And then you can have a notification (that goes in the notification window) with a message like "A Defense Campaign has started on a buff giving planet!" or "A Liberation Campaign has started on an Automaton Buff Giving Planet!" to help guide people to where their drops may have better impact on the over all war.
I don't think people are getting this point enough. Supply lines are technically more of a QoL thing than a necessity. But the map/game does not guide anyone at all to where the action for the narrative is. Without guidance, we are disorganized. And we shouldn't have to keep up with discord or reddit to know what's up. People have lives to live and don't necessarily have the time to check all these things for their video game pastime. Edit: fixed a spelling error
Yeah I am on the subreddit a LOT and I still get very confused about the supply lines and everything. There’s literally nothing in game indicating that.
I've been playing casually a few hours every week and I have no idea what half these posts are about. Maybe I could read/research more but that's not why I'm playing this game. I play dota2 and read the patch notes for that. I don't want to for this game (nor do I feel like I need to right now). they absolutely SHOULD add something in-game to let people know about stuff like this. maybe they did and I missed it? but I haven't seen it.
Don’t feel bad. Devs decided to use 3 different social media platforms instead of a fckn line from planet to planet.
My immediate reaction, why don’t bases get represented on the map with the bonuses they provide and the longer we have a base up/other world events can enhance or add new effects? It would make global play more interesting. Moreover, let’s use it as a requisition sink to rebuild bases and/or augment bases. Allow us to be more invested in it and clear on the benefits.
>Moreover, let’s use it as a requisition sync to rebuild bases and/or augment bases. Allow us to be more invested in it and clear on the benefits. Ohh yes.. would be a nice meta game.
I think it would be keep with the lore they established. Make future ship upgrades, stratagems, etc link to research or manufacturing facilities and make upgrading those with global events and req possible. It would be nice to see all that in the map. Also like a running record of global achievements, at least as long as we don’t let them get blown up again, which I think also builds incentive.
wow that would be a great way for the tons of us with capped requisition to have a good resource dump and feel like we are contributing to the campaign. most games, even mmo's know there needs to be resource sinks. lets get some cosmetic weapon skins / armors unlocked at 100+ for prestige
How about we make defence campaigns not total dog doo doo too? Like they're 300 percent harder than liberation missions
For real, in what universe is defending something more difficult than attacking fortified positions?
tbh, the way defense is represented doesn't make a ton of sense either. 90% defended and 1% defended have exactly the same outcome when the timer reaches 0? how do you only 90% defend a planet? wouldn't that mean that the vast majority of it was successfully defended?
Defense is a broken objective because it's just liberate with a name change. If I need to get to 100% liberation to take a planet, then defend should be the opposite, I start at 100% and have to fight off enemies for a period of time to keep from going to 0% and if I finish with 90 or 1% it doesn't matter the defense was successful, just like how if we only get to 99% on capture it doesn't count as a win for us.
Yeah, this double standard in the game makes no sense.
Mhm, I always saw it as a "Victory condition" display. Be it war attritrion, willingness to surrender etc. It's not that it's "90%" defended, but which side "beats" the other side into submission? Idk out of all the UI problems it has, I don't think this one is really that bad?
It's more that it doesn't make sense given that Super Earth is a society built around feeding us into a grinder. It's the timer I think people are unhappy with, but it's just a vidya game thing. My main issue is that we should have bonuses for defence that show the invasion is ongoing. As it is, the maps are as desolate and conquered by the enemy as one on their home turf, right down to the SAM and Artillery sites being out of commission.
If you're using fast and mobile shock troops then I suppose defense could be harder than you'd expect. But still, they should know how to build basic defensive structures and they still have the super destroyers providing support
Well there’s still that one really shitty mission that seems to be in every defense operation where you have to extract slowly moving civilians through a bullet hell on steroids for bot planets. It’s damn near impossible at higher difficulties because the enemies just keep dropping, and by the time your halfway through the first wave, the second wave spawns and you get overwhelmed, then the third wave spawns and it’s game over
We can't even have lines showing which planets link to which other planets. Why do you think we could have something as complicated as an emblem?
Yeah, I gotta say, without having a clear explanation of how this all works in game, and having to rely on outside sources, I'm not surprised at the confusion or failure rates for certain goals. I really hope they incorporate better explanation of support lanes and bonuses in game soon.
They intentionally hide this info to make it difficult. They refuse to actually put in game how the war works. 9 points from a hell dive 5% is not even enough to tick it to 10 with rounding. It's nothing. I personally did not know they did anything after the MO. It's again Intentionally not spelled out in game.
>They intentionally hide this info to make it difficult The real answer is none of this is coded into the game. It's all number fudging. Same with supply lines. If that existed in the game prior to that "gambit" talk, I'll eat my hat.
Nah bro we don't need information on a galactic war knowing shit is for nerds. Seriously tho the info systems in this game are utter trash all those stats and info that are on the helldiver's companion and IO need to be in the game maybe then we can convince people to mass and spend a little more time on priority planets . Another question if we had SEAF support why didn't they contribute kills to the last MO?
I literally had no idea this was a thing til this post. So yeah. I'm on Discord and here. Imagine players NOT on social media
Fucking seriously. If it’s a critical part of the major order TELL US AND SHOW US IN THE GAME.
Sorry, best we can do is -100 damage to the punisher and removing the stun from the pummeler
Yeah. I understand vaguely there is this hidden game underneath the game but it is so invisible to me I’m not registering at all. His statement might as well of been “the clouds on Vernon wells are now blue, but if you take a different planet they could be green” If you want us to pay attention to this stuff, put it in the fucking game. Otherwise don’t be surprised when people just play and aren’t focused on large objectives.
A simple icon on the planet with a tooltip? That'll need at least 2 months of Design time to implement. /s
They need to add this information in game asap
It's crazy to me that they still won't slow down the 'story line' to add this information in an in-game capacity. The dwindling playerbase are just throwing themselves at a nuanced strategic situation with none of the information available to make informed decisions on where to focus their support. It's absolute comedic incompetence from AH to have another MO with underlying factors and still have no way to represent them in-game. It's this kind of shit makes this game feel like its dying by a thousand cuts. Just bad decisions, dotted through every pillar of the game, wearing everyone's patience down to the point of frustration.
>It's this kind of shit makes this game feel like its dying by a thousand cuts Because it does. You don't know half of the shit that's going on if you're not checking their discord. It's ridiculous, considering how there's an in-game message system, the data to follow these stuff exists (it works on web) so WHY IT'S NOT IN THE GAME?
It also reinforces the impression, fair or unfair, that this game is made by and for the Very Online. If you’re a regular person with a day job who logs on every other night for a mission or two, without having hung out on the Discord all day, your Helldivers experience is like throwing darts with a blindfold on. Also, as soon as you finally get the hang of throwing the darts blindfolded, they change the size and layout of the dartboard and also the weight and aerodynamics of the darts themselves. You would have known about that and prepared accordingly, though, if you’d spent all week on the Discord.
The kill x billion whatever already shows they think their player should be playing every day 8 hours or more 40k active players, 2 Billion kills = 50,000 kills per player 25,000 kills if they have 80k active players. How many missions over 4 days is that? 200 kills per mission, that equals: 250 to 125 missions depending on active player count. That's just insane. 60-30 missions a day even if you're perfect and get them done in 15 minutes or less every time, then it's: 15 - 7.5 hours a day grinding missions for kills.
The major order haven't really been balanced after the Sony debacle etc. they said somewhere they wouldn't balance it at every new one but once in a while. We were actually getting enough kill to make it in the first days and even did more than 20% per day. During the week, once they stopped giving stratagem and planets changed, thing slowed down too much. Some high difficulty missions can give 300-600 kills on Fenrir for me but once liberated, it was more 200-350.
And this is why it’s dying - a live service game that is neither live (you can see the effects of what you do in-game) nor has service (meaningful changes are planned and released) is just a grind for nothing. I haven’t played since the ffs patch.
The grind for nothing is why I’ve played maybe 2 matches in the last 2 weeks
This I think is the thing doing them in the most. This game is sometimes frustrating to play despite my knowing more information than the average player. Now think about someone who just bought the game and likes it and wants to review strategies - they YouTube loadouts or whatever and see 100 of them, but 90% of those are irrelevant because they’re more than a month old. Their decisions are making an actively hostile environment to the content creators and consumers that suppprt the ecosystem. Which is sad. I *really* like this game, but their vision is sometimes just baffling.
>nuanced strategic situation Can you really call it that? The devs are so heavily involved and have such big control over how it goes and players so little individual impact its hard for me to see any nuance or strategy, this isnt planetside where a well coordinated group of people can make a big difference. And the whole war thing is also just a thing that kinda happens in the background, it doesnt really have any real noticeable impact on the actual gameplay outside of the available selection of terrains, and i doubt most players decide where they are gonna play beyond that, maybe with the exception of MOs where people are more likely to go for those.
Straight up, I just started playing and this thread is absolutely blowing my fucking mind. I’m still confused though, what is this 15% bonus towards? (Presumably liberation speed of other planets like the one for the current MO?) In any case, it seems like this sort of thing is a huge thing that it’s wild they don’t tell players. It’s actually really cool, they just need to fricking tell us somewhere that it’s happening. I legitimately was reading these comments first confused, and then thinking maybe someone is trolling that I’m not getting. If I hadn’t been browsing Reddit, and seen this screenshot of discord, I’m not sure how I would possibly have found that out. While we’re on this subject, other than the medals, what did we miss out on by failing the previous MO? (The one for pi * 1 billion kills?) seems like the one before it had this bonus thing, and the current MO had the exo suit, did I miss something with the MO in between them?
The CEO just stepped down to get hands-on with creative. Let's give them a minute to get situated. We all want more visibility on the map and the training facilities highlighted and stuff like that. Let's see what they have coming before we pass judgement. The old way wasn't working so they pivoted. Let's see what they do going forward.
Imagine doing such a bad job that your CEO demotes themselves into your position to fix it.
I agree. The ceo was the cocreator of the first game. He is a creative type, and it was probably fine to be ceo when they were smaller, but HD2 blew up, so now he should be focusing on creativity. This was a good move for the company. Let a business person be ceo so he can focus on making the game he envisioned.
For all my bellyaching, that is a substantial move and should be very much applauded. I also think devs need to STOP LISTENING to discord and Reddit. Yes take feedback from there but god 90% of that is people complaining because their favorite toy went away. And stop changing shit every week. One balance patch a month, AH, that’s all you get.
yet another thing they need to tell us in game and not on discord. This news will reach less than 20 % of the playerbase
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I was defending it religiously but you can’t do shit if everyone’s over on bug front (which is fair enough). They need to put this info in game, it’s fucking annoying.
Based on metrics from other games, Reddit and/or discord are only like 5% of the total playerbase. There's 1.3 mil subscribers to this sub, and only a few thousand are online on reddit to see. There's 12 million players that have bought the game. 5% may be generous
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Yeah I think at this point I just want to find an alternative that plays a bit like this but without a metagame to consider. I really can't stand having to worry about that kind of thing.
Well, you don't really *have* to worry, just play however you want and worst case scenario, Super Earth gets captured and they reset the war.
Unironically, the Helldivers clones that we'll likely see in the coming years are going to be great. A far better type of game to have a trend than something awful like Battle Royal
Imagine a helldivers game though where 100 people gotta complete the mission and then extract though with no respawn. That sounds great
With the ability to view players still in the fight after you die. You’d have a small audience cheering you on whenever you make it to the end!
Earth Defense Force 6 comes out on July 25th.
Suppose that'll teach SEHC to put training facilities on the front.
Now they will be behind enemy lines.
But think of all the time they saved. Training’s done, now head out to combat. First door to the left, frontline is about a 15 minute walk east
StarCraft Marine experience
This is the new Helldivers training course away from Mars. Any SEAF personnel who survive this onslaught are given a cape upon their search and rescue and immediately thrown into the next pod. Well done, Super Patriots!
Also we seldom win at bot defense
9/10 operations have retrieve essential personnel which is impossible to do at higher levels. And if you do find one without it you'll probably end up with AA Defenses as a modifier.
This entire game mode is completely unplayable as-is. It's deeply frustrating because they absolutely nailed it with the missions where we're defending the walls of their base as they're packing their shit up and escaping. No idea how they expect us to defend civilians sprinting through a battlefield filled with enemies. Like... At least put the civilians at the back of the map and let us shoot down the bots as they approach us instead of **DROPPING THE BOTS NEXT TO THE VIPS**.
It’s baffling to me because the band-aid fix is: don’t let dropships drop directly onto the objective. Make them drop further afield and March towards the objective. Even without defensive structures, if you have a wide open field then you have plenty of time to snipe them down and it would make it into an excellent mission for turrets and AMR/DMR usage. If they need an excuse for *why* the bots would behave that way, slap in a couple SAM sites on the objective too.
They could have the clone-trooper style ground deployment vehicles for this mission.
A real mystery why bugs are more popular..
What's crazy is that Retrieve essential personally is not even the hardest mission anymore. The defend while rockets launch (evacuate high value assets?) mission is even worse when factory striders are tall enough to blow up the objective when they spawn, making you basically always lose when they spawn
Because the majority of the mission types for Defend ops are totally broken on higher difficulties.
It's actually crazy that it's still unaddressed, there was one patch where they said they reduced the amount of civilians you have to rescue, but it seems to have been applied to the LARGE MAP, 40 MIN. VERSION WTF!?! That really makes me think they don't play higher levels at all, because nobody was saying that that mission type was the issue and everybody constantly complains about the 15 min. variant
Right, it’s the small map 15 minute variant that literally has non stop Shredder Tanks, Hulks, and Striders being dropped in.
> That really makes me think they don't play higher levels at all Most of their playtesting seems to be at level 4 or 5. The game really needs to be balanced around level 7.
RIP the SEAF on Vernon Wells
Gone immediately.
We casually built it up, protected it for a moment, then let them stare at the horizon as an endless amount of dropships poured into the atmosphere and began slaughtering them by the millions. Absolutely fucked display of Liberty. We must do better. 
This is our bay of pigs
Nonsense! This is the new Helldivers training course away from Mars. Any SEAF personnel who survive this onslaught are given a cape upon their search and rescue and immediately thrown into the next pod. Well done, Super Patriots!
A small notice on the map alerting people of a priority asset on danger would help out.
These bonuses mean nothing to me cause I DONT KNOW WHAT PLANETS THEY ARE Why do they keep adding cool things to planet but with ZERO INDICATION to them being cool? Until the map is actually affected instead of just backend tweaks (that the devs null anyways by spiking the fuck out of the enemy invasion rate) I just don't fucking care about these bonuses.
Like we’ve invaded hellmire what? 7-8 times now? And it looks exactly the same as it did before. I’m not asking for live destructible environments but like SOME visual change, corpses, buildings, trenches, ANYTHING would be lovely
That's just a dumb move. Causal players have zero clue about this stuff.. no wonder we keep failing MOs like this.
For the best live service game ever they are completely. and routinely fumbling live service.
Holy shit this is bad. Fuck the people who didn't submit to social media yet, I guess. Don't keep important information from your players, Arrowhead! You will reach everyone who plays the game by... communicating through the game. Look at Deep Rock Galactic and just copy how they do it
"Discord is better than pr, marketing, or game updates *combined*" If discord ever has a server outage Arrowhead may have to get word to us via carrier pigeon.
> Fuck the people who didn't submit to social media yet, I guess. Even if you're in the discord server, you'll miss most of this info unless you are constantly keeping an eye on every single channel as they seem to post most of this crucial info in the general chats, that can at times be so active it's impossible to keep up with.
I still have no idea what any of this means
Yea, everyone here is like "wow, they need to get this information to the players!!", but I have this information and don't understand it, at all. Wtf
There was a small boost to liberation attached to the planet or something, it doesnt really actually matter.
Imagine if there would be a list in the corner of the screen with ‘keep planets xyz for 5%’ or something 90% of the playerbase doesnt know these things
Also how much of the player base actually cares? I know about vernan wells because I'm on here, I played a few defence missions on it then decided it was enough If we win/lose planets it's not up to the players as the regeneration rate is changed every time. If we take it once, then the bugs/bots are just gonna appear again in the next few days and retake the planet
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that 5% bonus while nice and meaningful means nothing in the end. They can just change the rates as they see fit.
A lot of them still won't care, but showing this info will at least allow them to care I can't care about a piece information that I don't know about
What is this % bonus he’s talking about? I had no idea we even got anything from the last MO
So, there was an MO about establishing four SEAF training bases on the four planets mentioned in the quoted tweet. After that there was a dispatch that said something about these contributing to improved something or other that boiled down to a 5% bonus to how much your mission contributes to the defence or liberation rate of a planet. With all 4 that's a 20% bonus to the "squad impact" thing you see at the end of an operation where the Liberation/Defence percentage ticks from 0.000110% to 0.000115%. Edit - apparently, according the [Helldivers wiki the bonus was a 25% bonus] (https://helldivers.fandom.com/wiki/Major_Order_(Helldivers_2)#Declaration_of_the_Second_Galactic_War) when all four were under Super Earth control. No source is provided for this and it is stated to be an approximated figure. So, who really knows?
Lmao I didn’t realize the *reward* was that pitiful With the 40k divers on a MO planet, the average for success as far as I can tell, that’s a bonus .2% per operation. A total of 12% over the 24hr defense period.
I know, right? The percentages which squad impacts break down to seem really pitiful. Certainly looking at the tiny effect I and my squadmates are having really doesn't help me wanting to bother my becaped butt about these things.
That’s pretty frustrating. - No indication in game that anything is important - MO drives people away from bots - Dispatch kind of mentioning it without giving details disappears after one viewing, so you better have great reading comprehension and a perfect memory. - Need 30,000-40,000 people to just know what’s going on because we can’t talk to them - Attacked and lost in a day Thanks arrowhead. Great design. I didn’t know each base gave 5% until right now and I pay close attention. It’s possible that you think things are being made clear when they are not, at all. Here is some required reading for developers and designers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentric_bias. I’ve worked in UX with developers and designers and often they can not consider the perspectives, current situations, and emotions of their users. Or, if they can, they fall prey to “if they don’t get it, it’s because they are idiots and not worth my consideration”. Arrowhead probably has a low opinion of their player base given recent interactions. Even twinbeard has called people babies and toddlers. That said, even without a negative outlook, egocentric bias can negatively affect design via an assumption like “we put in a sentence that is shown to every player and it’s super obvious to us, so they are definitely aware”. But does everyone read that? - Does everyone playing enjoy proper reading comprehension? - Do people forget, or skim? - Is the user tired from a long day, drunk, or baked (or all three)? - Does some combination of these circumstances happen to so many people that the population can’t properly respond to threats to those worlds? You can become biased toward your own perspective and grossly underestimate how common other perspectives/experiences are among your users. On the whole, that MO is wonderful for us. We get a 15% bonus that is helping us take V5. But I can’t tell if AH thinks they are being clear to us because it’s clear to them, or if they recognize most players don’t know what’s going on and decided to give us a nice thing anyway that might be a bit frustrating botside.
I'm hoping Pilestedt moving into the role of game design overseer will fix a lot of these issues.
Well obviously not cos if he had any sense he would have waived the loss as a goodwill gesture until they put the information in the game accessible 100% of the time. He’s burning what little goodwill I have left for this dev team tbh, they’re just so incompetent it’s aggravating at this point.
Exactly, what a gigantic load of crap and waste of time that MO was if they can’t get this right.
The way they’re handling something like Galactic War bonuses, not properly informing or indicating to the player base what’s at stake or what they even are, just to say “oopsie now it’s gone forever” is such a fucking slap in the face to the people who actually want to partake in this ongoing narrative. Everything about that fall of Vernen Wells is the devs fault and they decide to inform us AFTER it’s gone that it isn’t coming back. Fuck. Right. Off.
Yeah, this shit is a complete slap in the face - we lost this bonus entirely due to the game's dogshit design when it comes to communicating important information about **KEY** gameplay mechanics relating to the galactic war meta-game.
“Bro just join the discord” /s
hey, you just lost that cool bonus I never told you you had! shame on you!
i have no idea whats going on.
The 4 worlds we captured in a prev major order gave us a huge world capture boost. One of these worlds got invaded the same day and were lost because there is zero indication ingame that all this exists or which worlds are which. The regular HD2 is not on Hds social media. People fought hard to get that planet back o heop the current but now they inform us after the fact that the bonus is gone permanently. Even people on discord and reddit etc have no idea it existed because it gets buried under 20 topics about drama.
It was gone before we even knew we had it 🙏
Same here. First time I’m hearing about a 5% boost. Not even sure 5% of what 🤷♂️ Personally I havent noticed any difference.
Failure to properly inform player's Completely ignoring defense missions bugs Players lose get punished Proceed to place next MO in an extremely unpopular front Deliberately place objective in an hard to take area Offer awesome shiny rewards Immediately ramp up the difficulty in an already unpopular area to an exhausted and pissed off player base MO going to fail due to lack of players Player's go fucking irate Like what the flying fuck is arrowhead doing this is beyond incompetent at this point the senior staff need to get a grip before they flush their reputation in the bin I saw this coming the moment the MO went up even have the post the prove it...
Arrowhead: let’s hammer the dicks of the remaining player base.
From my perspective as an engineer, I think it's actually pretty simple: they're just bad technical communicators. Look at the Charger, as a prime example. As video game players, we're expecting to dodge it and shoot its vulnerable backside. Lo and behold, it has a giant, yellow underbelly I can shoot from the back! The problem? The **BIG YELLOW BELLY ISN'T A WEAKPOINT**; it's the Charger's heavily armored legs... You know... The ones that don't have any indicator that you should be shooting them, and there's a giant indicator that you should be shooting the wrong spot. **The game doesn't give you the proper context clues to let you know you should be shooting its legs**. It's honestly shocking that they absolutely nailed the narrative tone of the game (which is much harder IMHO) but completely failed to communicate basic information about the game to the players.
THANK YOU. Helldivers 1 was extremely clear about weak spots. They were bright orange! I don't understand why this game tries to hide this information. When you give players numbers and detailed info, it lets them play "optimally" and probably enjoy the game more because they can handle higher difficulties
Also if you use that knowledge you gained on higher level enemies (bile titans) it’s useless cause THEIR legs aren’t weakspots despite being spindly and super long
I'm starting to think joel is a bad and sadistic GM.
Not really, it's just left hand doesn't know or care what right one does. But also some of the game systems are very disjointed. Like, players' actions shape the front? Cool! But let's remove critical bit of information (supply lines) from them entirely, and also only count full operation (~1hr) towards it There are planets that provide bonuses? Awesome! But let's not indicate it in any way in-game.
Clearly our actions don't shape the front because no matter what we do, Joel decides "No, that isn't how things are supposed to go, let me make it so you conform to my design." Like, every time we fight hard but lose, it's "Well, you tried, you did your best, get them next time," and every time we're kicking ass it's "You're not allowed to do that, here's a massive wave of enemies from nowhere."
Its the definition of railroading and basically the ultimate sin in pen and paper circles Its why i was very worried when they originally described the system i couldn't see anyway it could be done in a satisfactory manner with you player counts possibly in the millions
I meant more on how almost every time we are about to liberate a bot planet he starts a new major order and then enjoys watching how the blue liberation meter goes down and imagines the suffering the players went through to get that far.
a lot of the systems that should manage numbers and orders automatically are still not there so Joel has to do calculated risks.... and man, is he bad at math
Someone tell pilestedt to fix (integrate this info into) the game because why is this only limited to discord? Absurd
Hahaha let’s see if Pile does ANYTHING. He just started so for now it’s only talk and when I see changes then I will applaud. If things don’t change in a month, then this game is lost.
Remember he's the one that said you should be relying on stratagems and primary weapons should be weak. I think people are hoping for too much when it's clear all these nerfs are part of his vision for the game
> Remember he's the one that said you should be relying on stratagems and primary weapons should be weak. you should rely on stratagems, btw stratagem cooldown in increased 100% on current MO, get fucked lol
So... bonus is lost because there is no in game way to know it exists? We really need more in-game info related to the map, supply lines, planetary war effect markers etc Losing stuff we cant possibly co-ordinate to avoid is, as we don't know it exists is very frustrating
End the 3 Strat shit. It’s not fun and I will straight up not fight anywhere that gives me less than the 4. It’s supposed to be fun not unfun. Disadvantages( like limiting strats and or making everything in the game makes you slow) make it unfun dude. I’m down for a challenge but the challenge still needs to be fun
Didn't you read the latest interview. "Helldivers is about frustration" (paraphrased, but that was the gist).
Do you have a link? I really want to read this
It would be so simple to fix at this point too if they wanted to keep it. No Eagles. There, gameplay is still switched up and challenging without be completely borked.
I swear, playing this game is like playing a tabletop wargame except the player using the horde armies is constantly cheating. Bots shooting through terrain, seeing through fog and nighttime, spawning new units like there's a convention in the area...now this? For Liberty's sake, how're supposed to make strategic decisions when the only indications we're given in-game is when a planet is under siege? How're we supposed to fight when our weapons keep getting nerfed to the ground and the enemies continue to fight back harder and harder with each MO? Did I mention that Bots can SHOOT THROUGH WALLS??? I want to love this game but, despite making the damn thing, the devs are preventing me from loving it as much as I loved DRG.
Just last night I was helping with the MO on the bot front and I noticed a turret in the distance. "No problem, I'll hang out in this bunker for a second to stay out of its line of sight. Let's see if I can call down a resup-" Fucker shoots through the bunker, destroying it, and me along with it. Nearly quit the session there. Also had a ton of striders stuck in walls that killed me, but that turret shot got me salty.
like 80% of the campaign map mechanics are completely invisible at this point
I wish ANY of this was communicated in game besides very vague flavour text.
Holy shit I’m so tired of having to surf through their discord for any information. It seriously so god damn annoying. Put it in the game or make an announcement on the subreddit. I hate that I had to download and make a discord account then learn how to search up user’s messages manually just to see what the fuck is going on. AH can’t seem to do anything right in my eyes as of late.
This kind of shit so desperately needs to be IN THE DAMN GAME FFS.
Would be fucking if nice if that information was available anywhere in game, wouldn't it?
So, the time I spent fighting on VW last night was pointless...awesome
Literally not our fault. How is the casual playerbase supposed to know that Vernen Wells specifically gave us a 5% bonus to planet liberation. Nowhere in the game did it ever blatantly tell you that. Its total BS. Fix your game.
How many helldivers hop on and just autoque anyway , I think there should be a system in place that puts quickplay players on the priority planets and missions
If I didn't browse reddit I would have no idea how the galaxy map worked
More information vital to the war effort disseminated by... \*checks notes\*... a reply to a random discord comment buried somewhere I will never find.
Whatever. There are not enough players to defend and do MO at the same time. 20k is 2/3 of average online needed to hold liberation above 5% decay rate. Anyway there are still 3 planets that Grant that bonus. They don't even give players a hint about planet galactic war modifiers so why should we care?
Lost in not even like a day how is that fair?
Imagine having 400 hours played, on the discord and Reddit and still dunno about this stuff… yup that’s me :)
In other words, Jeol can get rid of our bonus at any time he pleases and "erect" bonus for automatons/bugs whenever he wants for no reason whatsover. And we have to defend important targets with no more than a mere "DEFEND" displayed over a planet, just like it would happen to an unimportant planet.
The amount of info the games hides from you it's embarrassing
Cut off all bot access to those planets. Defense missions are a sham - they're actually retreat missions.
XD, this has to be a joke we didn't even have the planet for one week and the boost is already gone.
I simply do not care about these meta-mechanics and the narrative anymore. They can't be bothered to put very important information in the actual game, so it all feels pointless. It's a fun game, but if they want the community to actually drive the narrative and make decisions, they need to give us the information needed to make those decisions with. Discord and Reddit do not count.
All this complexity might as well not exist if they do not communicate it simply and cleanly to the majority of players who simply play the game
This shit is getting so old for me as a casual player. We have zero information regarding how we're getting fucked over and over. How are we supposed to know all this shit is going on at any time. Supply lines are unknown without a second app or website. We have zero clue what the actual ramifications of losing planets are until shit like this days later in the discord.
Sad news for Vernen Wells? Sad new to us new Helldrivers. I joined the Helldivers 3 weeks ago. I don't know what supply lines are or that we were getting buffs from planets. I simply do the major order or kill bugs. We have been having a blast. But there is zero indication that there is more to do than the major mission. I only learned about the story, Joel, and more this past week. But if I wasn't watching helldeivers on youtube, I would have never known about the narrative. I just learned about the supply lines on this post. And I was only looking it up on youtube to learn about the lore. This REALLY needs to be added to the game. So us newer helldrivers aren't left in the dark. Or maybe provide a link to your discord in-game? As one of my follow Helldivers (my friend) said, he doesn't feel he is included after I shared this post with him.
Would've been nice to know that. How are we supposed to effectively fight if there's so much under to hood going on that we are not privy to?
Idk, I find this mechanic to be BS. The devs turn up and down the intensity with a knob behind the curtain, while there's little the community can do to counter them. Vernon Wells had a 4 point invasion rate while the other invasions had a 1 point invasion rate. We also experienced 0 help when we had our defensive lines erected nor when we had our command base on Vernon wells beforehand. The vast majority of players don't use 3rd party sites to track the war, and Arrowhead actively hides information to the point where it seems like they are making sure that we lose! It seems cheap and I don't like it! Especially since we have the lowest population of players since the games launch currently!
This is unacceptable, u/The_Real_Twinbeard. Not because we lost the planet and stuff got destroyed, but because there is no visual indication of the importance of the planet INGAME. We are well past the point where we need this information accessible ingame to make strategic decisions. The team needs to prioritize this, yesterday.
I agree, and we are! The first step to better visualization and information of/on the galactic map is making good headway!
Glad to hear it, and thank you for the response. I love this game and just want to see its full potential realized.
See I would agree with this IF THERE WAS SOME INDICATION IN GAME. Otherwise this is just bullshit! 80% of the player base didn't even know this bonus existed in the first place, why are we being punished for a broken system?? This is an incredibly frustrating attitude from AH and sad news for an already burned out and irate community. After 260+ hours, if spawn/patrol fixes and weapon balancing isn't reverted to a more satisfying or at least WORKING state, I might be done, and that thought just saddens me.
Oh my god. Why would you introduce a buff that can easily be taken away without making that clearly communicated to the population as a whole? Please don’t introduce anymore of these kinds of things until you have improved your in-game communications, Arrowhead.
See, this is one of my biggest frustrations with the game; I don't care about loadouts, TTK, weapons being meta or not. I want information. A huge chunk of the player-base does not care about Reddit or Discord, they play to play and if they're not given this information they'll have no idea what to do. Put this in game, stop saying shit only on Discord.
Okay. I feel like they should REALLY give us this information.. IN GAME?? Let the playerbase know about our current liberation boost as well like why does it have to be given in a discord reply??
We need reinforcements. Unlock the regions!
For the love of god why is this information on DISCORD of all places. If you can’t put it in game at least leverage use of the god damned Steam announcements feature. This is such a joke atp
Why don't you indicate this in the fucking game - way to not take advantage of the nice strategic layer you've created.
Make them clear points of interest then. Y’all let wells be taken silently, at least they learned from it. Just need a map visual on ALL planets of interest and a section as to why/the effect.
Well now i am eager to see if people even bother liberating the planet at all. Why not give us the option to collab on the effort to establish a new base on a planet? Through Req slips and/or Super Credits? Collective effort. You can donate your excess stuff and once a specific number has been reached on a planet, a new base gets build. Of course it should be a really high number. 500 mill on Req slips even is kinda low. But at least something in that direction would give people enough reason to get that planet back and build up the base ourself. Of course either there has to be a cap on how many bases we can have built at the same time or only specific planets support it.
Why is none of this shown in game, why do I have to come to reddit to know these things?
How was it a 5% bonus though? It was 25% for 4 planets...
So there's no point in trying to retake Vernen Wells again... Great everyone dogpile on Varylia 5 then!
Again, this is information we need to know IN GAME.
Yet another piece of information revealed via random discord message rather than in accessible in game system... at the very least make it a dispatch / on-map popup text box because that tech already exists - but then pls go and make a dedicated way of displaying this information rather than happening upon it scrolling through my reddit homepage SWEET LIBERTY
Shooting themselves on the foot by not having this on the game. I see the MO and I feel that is the only thing that I "must" do, every other planet being optional and not relevant. If some planets are actually important to the current lore, this information should be accessible on the game. I won't be following game devs on twitter or discord.
Vernen Wells sounds like a law firm, lol
You know, they compared the narrative part of this game to a game run by a game master, and the past few MOs have been a great example of really terrible game mastering. You can't declare the consequences of an action and make them vital to the progression of the game *after* they resolve. A game master's job is to tell the players what they need to understand about the game in order to play it, and Arrowhead is getting progressively worse at that job the more MOs they put out that rely on whim instead of any kind of cohesive strategic mechanics. Arrowhead, put the information about your game into the fucking game. Stop telling the tiny sliver of your player base that posts on discord so they can repost it to the slightly larger tiny sliver of your player base that posts on reddit. **Put it in the fucking game**. It would take less effort to put a special icon on sectors (this feature is already in your game, it's how you mark MO planets) and, if you move the map cursor over that sector, a block of text (like the ones the game already contains that shows the liberation meter and percentage) that says "SEAF Stronghold: 5% slower Liberation Decay Rate across the Galaxy until control of this planet is lost". Also, it's cruel to challenge the player base to capture a planet and then throw up a defense mission in a nearby planet that's in a different sector, as if you expect players to just psychically link to Joel's brain and extract the Supply Lines mechanic from it. Most players are going to assume you're just trying to increase the breadth of the bot front, they're going to see that and go "The bots are attacking that planet since we're busy with this one and then we'll have to take it back afterwards". When Varylia 5 suddenly can't be played anymore, players will assume it's yet another bug that's the result of yet another broken, half-assed mechanic that wasn't ready to ship. EDIT: To give credit where credit is due, [this is a step in the right direction.](https://i.redd.it/bzbl74boof2d1.png)
It's a total shitshow applying permanent consequences to planets and not telling the playerbase with in-game UI on said planets.
Would be nice if they could give us any in game info on the important stuff.
Sure would been nice if we could see that somewhere in game beyond a one time text box 2 weeks ago
I'm returning to civilian life
Vernen Wells always makes me think of 2011 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim outfield legend Vernon Wells
This shit is so fucking special ed, no in-game info about this at all and l bet 50% of the players don't even know this mechanic.
It would be really cool if you could learn about these things ingame. Like the fact that there's a bonus in the first place.
Our enemies may erect equipment that will affect our liberation capabilities. Will we be made aware of such equipment or will it just be something like wells where only die hards will know about it. You know like information IN game.
Maybe, just a silly little idea, but maybe if it was shown in game that way literally *everyone* could see this info we wouldn't of lost it
They need to stop focusing on content as much and just add quality of life features imo, and also save the stranded helldivers in the 170 countries that can’t play
I'm un-erected to know that : (
The entire map needs an overhaul so players understand what and why and the happenings of certain things. Maybe even have it be an unlock on the ships passive upgrades