r/HelldiversMasochists

I get it. The game currently is too easy. But the 90%+ winrate is not just because the game is too easy, it's because you've gotten too good. You have to remember that most of the playerbase is about as good as the devs are at this game. That is to say, complete ass. The people bored at D10 are better than 99% of players ever will be. But the problem is that if you add more challenge then you demons will eventually just be the guy in elden ring wearing nothing but a useless jar on your head, still soloing Malenia over and over. People have already full cleared D10 with a loadout of constitution rifles, and other ass stratagems. You keep calling for weapon nerfs, but that won't do any good if you can use literal garbage to still beat D10. People are going into commando missions guns blazing because they can handle the enemies.

This exact reason is why all the difficulty that has been added since launch has been essentially bullshit. Terrible ergonomics, enemies with no weakpoints, taking away controls with ragdolling, hellpod steering locks, keeping stratagems off high ground; none of it directly increases difficulty of the enemies or missions.

This post is not saying that the game shouldn't add any more challenge. It's just that the added challenge will cause the best players to adapt and it will once again no longer be challenging. Because the only way the devs saw to make the game harder is to directly nerf how good you all are at the game :)

Which is dumb btw, the collect platinum missions added spawns that didn't tank performance and made the objective require teamwork without being actual bullshit. This is the difficulty we need. I'm just saying that when y'all get good enough to once again win 90% of the time, stop asking for more difficulty, you're just too good at the game

Maybe it’s because I have a lot of hours. Maybe it’s because I need to try new games. Or maybe… maybe it’s because I can beat the games hardest difficulty blindfolded, deaf and half dead if I wanted to.

Over the past two years, a trend has become more and more clear. Constant buffs and power creep, any difficult enemy/weapon nerf eventually rolled back. The developers are now *terrified* to do any enemy buff or weapon nerf, because the pitchforks will come out no matter how needed the nerf actually was. Hell, if they make a change and it accidentally affects someone’s favorite gun indirectly, people start crying “shadow nerfs”.

I should not be able to consistently win D10 with, frankly, shit teammates. I should not be able to consistently full clear D10 before even half the mission time is up. I should not be able to blare a YouTube video, half watching and half playing, and still be doing just fine. I am not some god of a player. I’m not, I’m shit at a lot of games I play. This isn’t that.

By trying to constantly appease the masses on Reddit and other online forums, Arrowhead has ignored their main motto. “A game for everyone is a game for no one”. I hope one day they can stick to it again.

because mama ain't raise no weakling

What difficulty you guys n gals often play?

GUYS. this monkey paw balancing has to END.

look, i hate arrowshed, kneeglass mlemborg, juan pylonhead, and chums germany as much as the next guy - but even i still actually play the game. but now, it's getting to the point where im gonna leave a bad review on the swedish embassy in my city. why are they balancing monkey's paws?? I heard they're doing it on reddit! This is an animal rights violation. its ok if monkey's paws are not balanced, there's no need whatsoever of surgical intervention. let nature take its course. stop this madness Sparrowbread Studios, or I'm gonna uninstall the game 3 times a day. that'll teach you!!

DISCLAIMER!!!
THIS IS NE SAYING I DON’T LIKE UNFILTERED, DO NOT HARASS THE PEOPLE ON UNFILTERED

I don’t like unfiltered very much because they’re too negative for my taste, it feels like a wee bit of a circle jerk more than anything

Title.

Seeing how often those type of messages get posted and how much support they get, really does hammer home just how clueless those people are, not only about programming/game development in general but how actual non entry level jobs function. Do these people really think of AH hired them, they'd have everything they want by the end of the month? That AH is somehow incapable of doing what they're capable of doing? Do they really think that every employee just sits at a computer and is free to pursue whatever they want to design/develop? That's not how the corporate world works.

What's worse is, the modders aren't actually doing any of the heavy lifting that AH has been doing for the past 2 years+ (bugs/crashes/softlocks/performances issues across three fucking platforms etc), they're not building their own tools in order to make new mechs etc, they're using the framework that AH built and slapping other weaponry onto mechs and being praised to hell and back.

Modders are free to have fun with experimentation, testing out new things etc while devs are told what to do and when to do it, modders don't need to worry about bricking consoles/crashes - AH does.

A bit of a tangent but I find it funny how these people are crapping on AH for lack of content and yet I bet they were one of the ones calling for AH to get off their butts and fix performance issues/crashes over the last 2 years - which AH has clearly been doing.

No doubt they're call this a glaze post but all I'm doing is pointing out the morons in the room. These people genuinely believe that AH is incapable of slapping a different weapon onto a mech using the framework that they built.

https://preview.redd.it/9a7lpbr2hk1h1.png?width=1040&format=png&auto=webp&s=c40f45ae27646e8aec99c2d8e90c083cce209ad6

The post is flaired as humour and it is funny (and very true) but the response it has generated completely highlight the issue with HD2 and the horrendous cooperative game it "tries" to be compared to HD1 (which I will be a glad Glazediver for).

Many of the responses are "splitting up is efficient" or "ohhh who cares he's having fun being solo" or "why do you have to control how other people play"?

The level of freedom given to the player in HD2 is a blessing and also its biggest most fucking annoying curse that caters to anti-coop casual players, and more importantly actively antagonises any semblance of teamplay, friendship between randoms and tactical depth.

For those wondering why the game is so anti-coop despite being a coop game, it's VERY VERY simple for why it's a FUCKING SHIT COOP GAME since LAUNCH.

The game has made no forced demands (or not ENOUGH forced demands) of players to actually work together or have mechanics that FORCE interaction. What do I mean by this? Well, lets look at the 2 main ways that game devs figured out coop gameplay in their games that both deliver challenge and power fantasy (in a coop setting).

1. There is no class or hero system, choose your own loadouts, build your build for anything. With randoms? Create a loadout that covers all bases. Congratulations, the game's meta has been optimised EVEN faster. DRG, Darktide, Space Marine have classes WORKING together with clear distinct weaknesses and strengths. The freedom of this game doesn't allow that.

2. The game does not hard punish solo activity or have convenient coop activities. Valve fucking figured this out years ago and so have other games. HD2, for some absurd Narrowhead reason, doesn't have a convenient healing system for other players except for the CRITICALLY low HP Stim or a Stim Pistol (via a fucking battlepass). It also doesn't have a DOWNED mechanic. To add further, L4D ANIMATION locks you if you are attacked by special infected like Jockey, Charger, Smoker, Hunter and a TEAMMATE MUST HELP YOU. This game doesn't even have the easy nostalgia grab of the flying shrieker bug kidnapping a soldier Starship Troopers style. I can think of another, Cyborgs grabbing you by the neck and slowly strangling you, forcing a friend to help you.

3. Mission design is bad, but we all know this.

It's just disheartening to see a COOP gameplay develop a community that not only us content with minimal coop but also a Dev team hard focussed on Warbonds that deliver on the INDIVIDUAL player fantasy instead of teamplay. I wanted a fucking repair gun from the Mech warbond, I didn't even get that mechanic despite it being in HD1.

And it also sucks more that nearly every Warbond MUST feature some big explosive device or fast TTK stratagem that doesn't promote coop gameplay.

Oh yeah, AH, will never rework team reloading despite that being the easiest thing to do to promote teamplay.

Being the kind of guy who had only their constitution to level 25 for a long, long time, I know how terrible weapons can be a ton of fun. But when I look at the weapon pool, I realized primaries are the only category that don't have an anti-tank option. And then, a lot of the meta for the entirety of the game clicked.

Remember in the early days how everyone brought anti-tank stratagems all the time, leaving all the chaff control to their primaries and secondaries? Well, the answer seems obvious now, since support weapons are the only way to get a gun that kills heavies, people will grab them to kill heavies and not pick chaff killing weapons as their support weapons.

When they introduced the ultimatum and buffed thermites, that made it possible for divers that were focused on killing chaff to still have backup options against heavies, making a lot of the support weapons for killing weaker enemies a better pick. But that also meant that the ultimatum gets picked constantly, because its utility is too strong to be ignored.

This, sadly, means that all non-ultimatum secondaries get left behind, and have little utility for the wider playerbase.

So, I've come to the conclusion that we need an anti-tank primary weapon. Something that should be between the ultimatum and support weapons. Not as dangerous as the ultimatum, but not as strong as an anti-tank support. That way, pistols can become chaff clearing options again in a well-rounded loadout, breaking the meta and making the game less stale.

I thought I'd share my post here, since I know that a lot of you are willing to have a harder experience during gameplay, so I wanted to gather your thoughts on the subject. How can we diversify weapon usage without making the game even easier, especially if there were to be an anti-tank primary available?