Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 Dev Tracker




07 Mar

Comment

Originally posted by dr_jiang

The developer in question is u/AHGS_Fredrik_E. You can find the quotes in their post history, assuming they aren't deleted. Others, I found through threads, like this one.

I haven't deleted anything, it's all there to see.

Comment

That was me.

I went a little far with the trolling, but what I said is said.

I'm sorry if people took offence to it, I'm not going to engage with the community anymore, since as many people have pointed out; we have a community team that should handle that. I figured I'd have a little fun with the players, but I realize being a dev I'm in an unfair position.

Maybe this isn't going to mend anything with you, but atleast I feel I should own up to it and apologize. I'm sorry.


06 Mar

Comment

Originally posted by itsmehonest

You worry about overbuffed items? Please for the love of Democracy Don't neef more until all primaries are buffed. This clearly isn't a super popular bance/patch

Unsafe mode is great, but when you have a BT and 3 chargers and hunters in your butt that you're trying to dodge, an explosion becomes way too likely

The way to stop things being auto picks was to make everything else way more appealing... plus the shield was nessecary due to the armour issue

There shouldn't be any more need for more nerfs with the primaries as far as I'm concerned.

Comment

Originally posted by itsmehonest

So does that not tell you that the other primaries simply aren't good enough given that's what most people have said?

Energy shield gets his through by the small hunters constantly and the railgun is the only thing that let's you continue moving while being chased by multiple bile Titans and chargers that never run out of stamina.. recoiless etc. Simply are not viable because you can't reload, you will just get knocked over constantly unfortunately

We will see what happens, our first priority was bringing things in line. Then we can see if things needs to come up in general. People are still successful on helldive even with other weapons, it is just a lot easier with the mentioned items. I currently worry a little about the flamer and orbitals being overbuffed, but we will see.
Overall we're not so worried about stratagems being strong, it's just that the railgun and energy shield really didn't have a downside, so the other stratagems just pale in comparison. The railgun can still do mostly the same as before, but only on unsafe mode. And the shield will save you from one big hit and some small hits, but it won't start recovering immediately. So they should still be good, we just hope they stop being autopicks.

Comment

Originally posted by zxosz

honestly why wasnt usage data used, nerfing had no business happening when more than half the guns are not used because they hit like a wet overcooked noodle outside of a 1 shotgun.

We can still get an average of kills per mission no matter how many uses them, people do still use the other weapons after all.

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Originally posted by throwaway2048675309

but you really touched off

because I said "Boo. Bad take"? Or because I dared to ask you what is viable against chargers?

I didn't start getting snippy with you until your asinine comment about "skill issue"

I didn't see your comment about what is viable against the chargers, but it wasn't only your comment that got me trolling I realize. However you started commenting on a lot of things, so you stuck out.

I do still stand by what I said, if you can't make it work where other people can, then that would be the definition of a skill issue.

To answer what is viable against chargers; the legs and butt are weak points, it won't be as fast, but you have options other than the railgun. It isn't supposed to be easy to deal with them, but the railgun might've given off that impression. Try things and see what works.

Comment

Originally posted by itsmehonest

Wasn't the breaker was supposedly not overrepresented?

Settled in what sense sorry? There have been a ton of posts wanting weapons being brought up to the breaker/railgun status for the past month

I get you want the higher difficulties to be challenging, but they weren't trivial to begin with given you always end up with bile Titans and chargers being able to catch up to you constantly, and now the railgun is nerfed.. like damn that goes from fun to annoying fast when you get ganked by heavies non stop with the only mobile counter being nerfed lol

The Breaker wasn't overrepresented when looking at successful extractions at higher difficulty, but the average killcount per mission was a fair bit higher with the breaker compared to all the other weapons, which was mostly on the level. The primaries don't exactly have a huge footprint on the higher difficulties, it was mostly the railgun and energy shield that trivialized things.

Comment

Originally posted by driellma

Well, this is the general sentiment a lot of people seem to have at the moment. Sure i'm not speaking for the whole playerbase, but i feel like i'm not alone.

Also, i understand what you mean, like Helldivers 1, there's no real vertical progression, and this is fine. But in Helldivers 1, most guns felt satisfying to use, in one way or another. Sure, it was a mechanically simpler game, but still.

Helldivers, despite the unique gameplay, is still a shooter at its core. Shooting your weapon should feel cool and satisfying, once again. A good half of the weapons honestly don't feel like that right now, and i don't think you need player numbers to understand why, with most of them.

Also, understand that me and many others, we seem angry, but not because we hate the game, but because we love it and we are concerned about his future. And i sure don't see myself playing a game where every warbond will bring more weapons that feel alright to use in the best case.

...

Don't worry, there are a lot of very vocal people with strong opinions, that's a good thing because that means people actually care.

We are looking into what we can do to make the weapons feel better besides just changing stats. Animation, sound and vfx etc. are levers we can use that doesn't affect balance, but that is harder to swing with a schedule full of other things.

Tweaking the numbers to get the guns into line was the priority here, but we'll keep an eye on the community, we just want the game to mature a bit before we start turning the big knobs.

Comment

Originally posted by throwaway2048675309

this isn't a throwaway. Just because it has throwaway in the name doesn't mean it's a throwaway. I post on it all the time, check my history, ya goof.

Most people I've interacted with here is very understanding and polite once I've made my case, but you really touched off and that just made it a little too tempting to mess around.

We want to get things in line, and for players to have a little more than four weeks on the game before we start making huge changes. We'll buff things it turns out our line of reasoning doesn't work.

Comment

Originally posted by driellma

I've seen in the leaks what kind of new weapons we can hope for. Right now, all the weapons in the steeled veterans straight up feel like ass to use, one way or another. Dominator COULD probably be good but it handles like dogshit.

The shotguns got a nice buff with the ammo, thats good. Pray'n'spray is still not good, not totally useless, but not good. The base liberator feels just ok i guess. Weird that the defender has better stats, but it handles worse and is tricky to use at distance, but i guess it's balanced, not complaining about this one.

Liberator penetrator straight up feels like ass to use, you got pen but the damage and ammo pool really isn't there to make up for it. The default handgun is useless because there's a straight upgrade right after. The senator COULD be good but the sight/handling is turbo crap and the reload takes 6 years. Johan said it himself, it's not very good.

Diligence is alright i guess ? The counter sniper model is somehow a ...

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Related to your points, it's really hard to balance something based on subjective opinion. We're mostly looking at what is overrepresented at the moment, seeing how weapons perform next to one another, because people like things for som many different reasons. We started with adjusting the things that are under/overrepresented first. And once the players settle into some sort of groove we'll look at bigger changes. It's far to early to make large sweeping changes, so it makes more sense to just bring the outliers into line.

We expected that people wouldn't be too keen on progression not actually changing the power curve, but we wanted you to have something to work towards, without invalidating the starting equipment. It's a different way to do things is all I can say.

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Originally posted by driellma

Makes sense. Hope you'll answer my other answer about the state of weapons.

Yeah, give me a sec. It was kind of a lot to read.

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Originally posted by itsmehonest

Or you could have brought the weaker stuff up to the strong stuff end of. Helldive isn't super easy when you're relying on random lmao.

The only really weak weapon was the Spray and Pray and maybe the flamethrower, we're trying to bring it to where we'd like it to be. It doesn't make sense to rebalance the entire arsenal when the game is only four weeks old, it made far more sense to bring back the things that are vastly overrepresented. We'll be able to make more informed balance changes when the game has settled a little.

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Originally posted by throwaway2048675309

yeah, they definitely need to take your reddit credentials away. jfc.

Before they do that, I'll make sure to have my fun.

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Originally posted by 8888888888888889

I like my games as hard as possible, but you guys are definitely going at it the wrong way if this patch is any indication of what the future holds.

Nobody worth listening to is saying the game should be easier. This isn't what people are, or should be, upset about. Your design is just flawed.

I'm feeding the rage a little for my own entertainment here, just so you know.

We haven't nerfed anything into the ground, I just think it's a little too early to pretend like the game is figured out. We made two of the most brainless playstyles less viable, and brought the guns that are under/overperforming more into line with the rest. The game is only a couple of weeks old, so before we start making sweeping changes we want everything roughly where we intended from the start. That doesn't mean we won't bring things up when we know more about how people play the game.

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Originally posted by lipov27

Well, there's only so much one can do shifting numbers around, when it comes to difficulty. Especially since, in my experience, higher difficulties are decided by stealth and evasion much more than combat power. Still, I'll be glad to see the railgun meta go.

You can't really avoid getting into fights, but there are definately lots of things the player can leverage besides their gear., and that's a good thing for sure.

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Originally posted by driellma

Can you tell me why a Senior Animator is trying to give Ls to people on a balance patch?

Because I'm on the weapon balancing team. We wear lots of hats here.

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Originally posted by Cursix-

And if in the process of making the game perfectly match your vision over however many months, you completely suck the fun out of it by making everything feel unsatisfying and basically slapping people with "no you're not actually meant to be doing this difficulty", then what's the point?

I'll be happy to push for buffs if it turns out to be needed, the game is only a couple of weeks old and you can't expect the game to be figured out already. We touched the biggest offenders, once players are past the Dunning-Kruger phase we can start looking at bigger changes.

Comment

Originally posted by soundwafflez

As you might know, there was a lot of misinformation about titans having some secret weakspot or other weakness that allowed 1-2 shot kills. This is obviously not true.

There's also been various posts not gaining much traction over the past few weeks regarding this bug, that is, until a few days ago with this post.

I've also tested this myself, finally enabling crossplay, and found that I could easily and extremely consistently one shot bile titans across the map on extermination missions if the host was on PS5.

Edit: The same streamer in the post linked just tested the PS5 bug again, and was able to kill a titan in 3 headshots after the patch. It takes roughly 15-18 now with a PC host.

Yeah, we're looking into that. It's definately a bug :(

Comment

Originally posted by 8888888888888889

"We like what we see with the other weapons"

You like seeing all of your primaries unable to kill a single medium enemy in one clip?

You might just not be shooting them where they're weak, and you also have stratagems, explosives and teammates.

Comment

Originally posted by soundwafflez

Hi Fredrik, after seeing the patch notes I was pretty puzzled about the changes, but after testing in-game, being able to still 3-4 shot headshot a charger seems fine to me. The leg shot was mostly to save ammo with the railgun. For bile titans, the railgun was always the backup option, so it doesn't change too much.

The elephant in the room right now is the PS5 hosting bug, where one could one shot a titan with an unsafe headshot as a client if the host was on PS5. This seems to have given a lot of people the wrong impression about the railgun, which took roughly 10 unsafe shots to kill with a PC host. This bug wasn't mentioned at all on the patch notes known/fixed issues, and there seems to be a LOT of misconceptions about bile titan TTK stemming from this bug, driving sentiment against the railgun, and making it seem better than it is to a very large portion of the playerbase(anyone playing with crossplay enabled on pc, and all ps5 players). It seems to...

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I've not seen that bug mentioned anywhere internally, so I can't shine any light on that. I'll bring it up with QA, because I agree that seems like a huge issue. Thank you for bringing it up.