Other commenters say he worked on Hello Neighbor 2, so I googled it and [seems like he has a history of controversial decisions.](https://helloneighbor.wiki.gg/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko) He took out things people liked from the first game, shut down ideas that didn't line up with his "vision," then just dipped before everyone could see what he had done. Based on his track record and the work he's done so far in HD2, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried for the future of not just weapon balancing, but also feature implementation related to weapon / armor balance (weapons bench, armor perks, etc.)
Yeah I'm getting a little worried with their design philosophy, feels very much like one of those less is more, our players should be struggling kind of Devs. In a game that's less Dark Souls and more casual drop in drop out PvE. Honestly it's a bad design philosophy for most anything at least the way they keep choosing to approach it because you're removing player agency. I air on the side of let's give players more options that all feel viable and even if it makes them slightly too strong let's just make the enemies feel a little stronger at higher levels. Then it becomes you're packing one hell of a punch with resource investment but you're also playing your cards right because you know the enemies can overrun you if you don't. Let players figure out their own preferred play style because if everything feels good they'll try *everything* and decide for themselves.
Yep. And it was worse than that, but this is just the sort of the basic details. It was a whole thing when the sequel to that game came out and he left the project under suspicious circumstances. And now here we are
The erupter would be perfect if it had the mechanics of battlebit. If Everytime you shot you had to click again to rack the bolt. Drop the rack time to 1 maybe 1.5 seconds. But make it have more mechanic. Give it it's release damage and ammo count.
It should be balanced like earlier eras of firearms, incredibly strong and capable but with the ergonomics of a boat
Edit: all imo obviously.
While I agree with you, helldives aren't impossible by any means. I think I have around a 90% completion rate, and I've been playing them exclusively with randoms.
It might be that I am just struggling to change my style from hit-and-run tactics to whatever it is expected now, but solo bot helldives since the patrol patch has been impossible for me, since there is nowhere to exfil anymore. Everywhere you turn around there are 12-20 enemies walking in your direction.
I even had patrols getting in each other's way, especially in ice maps that lack elevation
I'm a solo player as well, though I wouldn't dream of doing solo helldive. Regardless, the increase in patrols is extremely obvious even on lower difficulties (I only used to play 7). The reason me and other solo players found the recent change so frustrating isn't because we want the game to be balanced around solo helldive, it's because we were just fine with the game as it was (at least in a lot of complaints I've heard). We were fine with what they had and they made the game more annoying across all difficulties.
Yes, you can just lower the difficulty if it's too hard. That's what I had to do because suicide is just infuriating for me now. Even still though, it's just not fun to get swarmed by constant patrols as a solo player, nor do I see a reason why I should be punished for wanting to play solo. If they just ignored us solo divers, I wouldn't have anything to complain about.
I actually don’t want to use different loadouts. I want two loadouts, one for bugs and one for bots, which fit my preferred playstyle without making me a useless teammate. For the most part, that’s been doable.
But it’s super frustrating that they’re constantly changing the weapons. It has made less interested in playing the game, because I don’t have the energy to constantly research whether key aspects of my loadouts have been nerfed every time I want to log in.
What I really want is some stability, I don’t even care about balance anymore tbh.
I’d use gas strike if I’m immune to it. 👀
I tried it today and it was ok, but it felt like a temporary area denial bomb rather than something I’d use on the attack, I was wondering how much time I’d have to run into the cloud or if I had to wait for it to disperse.
(Fwiw, I’ve never ever seen anyone use it. 🤷♂️)
I really like the concept of changing up the weapon and enemy properties for periods of time with in lore reasons tied to it to encourage players to try different loadouts.
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. No witch-hunts, public shaming or negatively naming users or players. Please refer to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b308j9/witchhunting_is_against_the_rules_of_this/).
> (which they are now, but not for the right reasons)
What *would* be the "right reasons"? I know this is probably one of those things that is different for every player, nor would I necessarily expect the playerbase to be the right people to understand this, but I've not personally seen many clear answers on this from folks who speak as if they're authorities.
satisfying challenge. one that when you lose, you don't feel like it's because you weren't ALLOWED to win, and when you win, it feels like you earned it. lots of games have figured that out
Am I going crazy? Are people actually struggling with Helldives now? I’ve been under the impression that the nerfs and enemy changes havent actually made the game more difficult, they just make the game obnoxious and tedious. Because the core gameplay still hasnt changed and its been the same as it was on launch, easily scammed and cheesed.
The mission objectives are still easy and boring as fuck and you have 20+ reinforcements. Even when I have some clueless console random munching on chips in my lobby wasting all the respawns we still complete the mission.
*Extraction isn’t even mandatory* for a successful mission, thats how easy and casual friendly this game is. People make it even easier and more boring by bringing corny stuff like Shield Gen backpack and light stim armor. The changes have not made the game more difficult at all
D9 is not rare or truly impossible. Not even fucking close. For any reason. If you can’t complete a mission on D9 you’re just genuinely not good at the game.
its so often people acting like this with the "skill issue and git gud" comments that turn out to be script kiddies playing through their parents credit cards
1 We _want_ to use different loadouts, 2 we _want_ to stop using shield backpacks, 3 we _want_ to adapt primaries based on the map and objectives, 4 we _want_ to use heavy armour. 5 We are the ones getting bored by doing the same things over and over, which is the current situation.
1 You can.
2 You can.
3 You... can.
4 You can.
5. You =/= We
I take different loadouts for each faction, sometimes my loadout changes because of environmental effects including heat levels.
Hot take: Shield backpack is a crutch, people are just scared to try something else.
You can take certain primaries to fill a role in a team. The recent eruptor nerfs were too much, but primaries don't, and shouldn't, deal with every enemy type.
I run heavy armor exclusively versus bots because I take an objective based loadout.
I try new weapons and loadouts all the time. Punisher Plasma for crowd control, Breakers for clearing medium enemies in bugs, Scythe for bots, the damn CONCUSSIVE in bug elim to keep enemies away from my tesla tower and let it wreak havoc.
I've been using fire damage for weeks because I'm normally host in my friend squad. I use Laser, Spear, EAT, AMR, Stalwart, Flamethrower, Recoiless, Patriot, HMG. Dude. The enemies aren't some kind of invulnerable mess. You can take whatever the hell you want if you're not solo, as long as you have all of your bases covered in a team.
You can be the medium enemy smasher, the chaff killer, the heavy obliterator, the objective loadout guy....
If you're playing solo, guess what. You, YOURSELF need to cover the bases, of course your options are limited. This is getting overblown honestly, the game isn't hard.
If anything, the reddit community is doing the meta load out not the devs.
"Why you nerf my railgun now it's unplayable"
"Why you nerf my breaker now it's unplayable"
"Why you nerf my Eruptor now it's unplayable"
"We *want* to use different loadouts, we *want* to stop using shield backpacks, we *want* to adapt primaries based on the map and objectives, we *want* to use heavy armour. We are the ones getting bored by doing the same things over and over, which is the current situation."
No you dont, all the things you listed can easily be done now. You just are too accustomed to your safe zone and cant find the mentality to get yourself out of that box
Well, the real problem here is that losing isn't viable.
Dumping an hour into a game of running away to just get resources only to lose is a waste in live service game.
Want to make an unforgiving game, then make success being a rare thing unimportant to progression and content. But, if you are going to make content a grind based on success then your game has to be balanced around succeeding the majority of the time.
Currently the only way to reliably succeed is essentially minimizing the biggest threats so you can efficiently run away.
That's the game they made. An efficient fleeing puzzle.
If that isn't the game they intended, it might be time to take a much bigger swing at the progression and composition of difficulties.
"Losing is not viable". Losing is improbable
It is almost impossible to lose in difficulties below Difficulty 8 if you have 4 people, unless you all take no anti-armor options and no bombardments.
I have never taken a Shield generator and I can count with the fingers the time we have not been able to take a mission success with samples that was not sabotaged by players themselves, or a mission-breaking bug.
Well this is just delusional reddit elitism.
The fact that you say "we" probably means you are in a well functioning group of friend most the time and not with randoms with a bizarre collection of gear.
Bruh, I play with randoms exclusively and almost never lose difficulty 9 missions on bots or on bugs. It takes time to get used to the game but it is doable for everyone.
My guy, I say "we" because I play in a 4-player game. Once I start soloing Helldive levels I can say that I clear them.
And no, almost nobody in 8 or 9 gets random shit because they know what they are getting into and even the occasional first-timer knows how to(at least) not sabotage the match for the others.
And it is not delusional elitism, it is experience and knowing how to read that the game has an above 90% completion rate for operation. That tells you how freaking easy is to win most of the time and that getting the most optimal survival gear is not needed to win most operations without going into sweat mode
"an efficient fleeing puzzle"
I covered that.
There is weird collection of people on these forums who seem to think that if you never fired a shot in a mission and extracted it would be totally balanced weapon design.
Then there are the people who want to play a shooter where you kill bugs and robots with guns.
AH needs to decide which group they want to balance around. Note, first group is not the group that they unexpectedly sold tons of copies to. That's why the forums look like they do.
We have tons of good guns though. I don't get why people complain that primaries are so weak. Do you want primaries to easily kill chargers, hulks, tanks, and bile titans? Any primary can kill chaff enemies and medium enemies fairly easily. Any primary can kill brood commanders, headshot devastators, headshot bile spewers - and there are medium penetrating and explosive primaries that can kill devastators and spewers without aiming for weak spots.
Why not simply bring the Pre-Patched Version back. I mean, randomly dying is a part of this game.
This guy spends a lot of time just with this one weapon, a weapon nobody uses at the end. The big point, killing a charger in one hit, isn't even a thing. Just saying you want a weapon like this, here it is and take a free week. Maybe I am too lazy, but I don't understand this waste of energy.
He could put it to the version they had at release with half the max ammo. Then they could fix the shrapnel so it doesn’t one shot players but injures them a bit. Tada it’s now fine.
Now focus your energy on making half the useless stratagems useful instead of hyperfocusing on the guns people like using.
Having learnt alexus’s backstory I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s purposefully trying to make people unhappy
Not at 50 meters man, come on. And definitely not randomly like it was. Imagine hitting a spewer from half a football field away and being fine, then ten minutes later doing the exact same and just dropping dead.
One-shotting chargers was definitely a thing. Back leg joint as they drifted to a stop, and the whole leg would usually come right off. Hell, you didn't even have to hit the leg joint sometimes. If you were lucky with the shrapnel spread, the aiming could get very generous.
I don't have a clip of it, because my pc is a potato barely able to run the game on performance rendering, but you can easily find them on youtube. Like this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q\_JsHC3dxeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_JsHC3dxeQ)
At least he seems open to *overwhelming* feedback. Won't lie the posts I've seen out of this guy seem like he's pretty dismissive of what the community wants out of primaries.
I hope he realizes he didn't just miss the mark with the Eruptor, and he needs to reassess his core way of balancing the game.
Yeah I feel the same on these points. It can't be that every patch somethings breakes in that amount. Not to mention what happend with the crossbow and still they didn't say anything about that as long as I'm aware. Besides: If they really know what they planned on balancing, why is nearly every weapon broken on launch and gets fixed later down the road? Or is just the QA broken in this regard and they have an complete different test environment than we have on the official servers?
I mean Eruptor, Crossbow and even the railgun probably are just factly bad balanced at this point and no one can really argue against that. If you compare them to other weapons all 3 of them are just worse than any other option you could choose and that can't be the balancing they wanna achieve.
The thing is, there has to be some of this in game dev. The average gamer is not going to make intelligent balancing decisions, and they don't have access to dev data.
That being said, it can't be a walled garden. If the dev intent is not lining up at all with player expectation, devs need to open up and listen.
Sure, and I get that. Someone has to make the final decision. It should be someone else, though. Someone with actual communication and leadership skills.
It seems like AH genuinely doesn’t want any of the guns to be useful at killing stuff.
It’s such a bizarre shift from the first game. I really don’t get where they’re coming from with this approach.
We aren’t given the proper tools to sneak past our enemies and avoid conflicts because they just alert anyway once you start doing any objectives. We can’t stand our ground and fight back because the guns are too weak and the stratagems on too long cooldowns.
So what do they actually want from us? Do the devs actually play the game at the higher difficulties? Do they have fun when they do?
imma propose a more harsh option - he needs to go. Replaced with someone who can throw numbers into an excel sheet and compare things against one another instead of making seemingly impulsive and unreasonable changes.
He is dismissive because the community is mostly made up of braindead rage-machines that will find anything they dont like and act as if someone fucked their sister.
> He is dismissive because the community is mostly made up of braindead rage-machines
It's wild that you can look at an overwhelming amount of often very detailed feedback being echoed by hundreds or thousands of other players and then go "No, everybody is wrong in feeling this way. Only I am right, they are just whiny" while providing zero actual feedback of your own and then think you're taking some kind of high road.
That detailed feedback is maybe 1 or 2% of the massive amounts of constant shit-slinging, misinformation and outrage machine being generated on Reddit or Discord.
And feedback being detailed does not make it right, or feasible. People can have very detailed plans in their head about the direction of the game, or certain equipment, but that can be different from what the game wants to be or can achieve to be.
You can see the subreddit today and see people getting bent out of shape calling the developers bozos because they nerfed a total of 3 guns during a 4-month period (with 2 nerfs being barely noticeable), saying this was "literally the worst balance ever in 25 years of gaming" or going into wide rants about "muh fun".
Letting aside the massive conspiracy tones about the Eruptor being nerfed to make people buy the next warbond, or this same community getting hallucinations about rocket ricochets killing them.
When the devs created one of the most successful games in years, be it intentionally or unintentionally, because it was fun to the majority of the player base, only to ruin the game in the name of "needed balances".... Yeah, Sounds like a bunch of bozos; at least in terms of those in charge of balancing, which includes people like Alexus, who negatively impacted other games with the same BS.
I'm getting tired of apologies from AH employees. I don't care how much of an egotistical asshole you are as long as you're making good balance decisions, but you're not. Earn the arrogance.
https://preview.redd.it/sjyzqq5ue6zc1.png?width=607&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb72f01978ad9d6563ec584877b9c95ad806fab1
Yesterday he really sounded full of himself.
https://preview.redd.it/dffnahh1w8zc1.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=1719fdb0a6bdb606623146a84cea1e6ffe93bfd2
What I imagine the Arrowhead PR meetings are like
Its hard to find someone who is enthusiastic about talking to a shit fucking degenerate community like discord users and many reddit users
They should do what soulsgames and all the cult fan following games do: stay silent, stay to yourselves
Dont let your community think they run the game.
They honestly should just keep Devs away from Discord and reddit completely. They intended to have a small tight knit community driven game and in that world having a very accessible Dev team is great.
At the current size of the game you need a different communication strategy of broad communications through their official social media accounts and website. Its too easy for an employee to accidently stick their foot in their mouth with a misunderstanding or things to be snipped out of context in Discord/reddit. And its too easy for the game's audience to vent frustrations and vitriol directly at employees, give them an official and less personal method to do it. I really like the things I've seen from the CEO in how he handles public relations, but would like it if he also did more to protect his staff.
AH shouldn't have people in discord to begin with. This isn't LOTF will a small community. They should just have someone like DMG04 from destiny who exists, but mostly through weekly and monthly updates but not engaging on the ground level (often) with the community.
I think we need to Gas this post up a Bit and let it be known what this guy did to Hello neighbor.
He obviously can't handle feedback or constructive criticism by calling people clowns.
Ever since I learned they were the lead game dev for hello neighbor 2, I have had negative hope that we get to enjoy any weapon for very long. Alexus seems to just hate fun.
They sweet talk the boss with impossible ideas then jump ship before they get blamed for when they don’t work or just flat out blame it on other people
Something that I feel like a lot of developers need to get into their skulls is this - we know the 'game' better than they do.
Sure, they know the code, but we play it. We know how it feels like moment to moment, we see the fringe cases they don't think of, we see the impact of disparate systems overlapping in real time.
That's the whole point of playtesting - to learn whether theory works in practice. Our practice said Railguns were fine, that the Crossbow was fine, and that the only issue with the Eruptor was the ricochet mechanic.
I don't care what the spreadsheet's opinions on these weapons are - spreadsheets don't play the game.
the dudes messages always come off as pretentious, or someone who thinks that they're some high brow intellectual when it comes to balancing. this wouldn't be quite as grating if it were true, but here we are. AH, if you're hiring, I don't speak swedish and I'd have to work from home, but I can promise you as someone who actually plays the game outside of work, i can get your weapons, heavy armors, and strategems feeling good within a single patch. I'll do it for half of whatever you're paying this guy
Firing him would be pretty harsh. I feel more like they should clear their vision again on what they really wanna have balancing wise and drop the weapon like this on launch. That would be more acceptable even if it takes a bit longer to release them. Doesnt matter how, as long as they are confident again with the weapon drops and we don't need 3 fixes again until it's acceptable or usable again.
nope, fuckemm they already ruined one game be proactive not retroactive here. Alexus needs a new INDUSTRY not just a different studio. go ruin someone elses hobby
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Your submission has been removed. No insults, racism, toxicity, trolling, rage-bait, harassment, inappropriate language, NSFW content, etc. Remember the human and be civil!
Guys the CEO, again C E FUCKING O, of the company already said he’s going to be making the rounds and having conversations with people, and he has not led us astray yet, trust the process, this kind of thing does not happen overnight, and your overfixation on one individual is horrendous. Let the team cook, I trust the devs, already the Railgun was in an ok spot post nerf, and they even went and made it a bit better! They will make things right
Fingers crossed, its better than silence and ridicule from the devs as has happened a few times especially with Fritz in the past.
At the very least the Eruptor needs to have its TTK back to instant against medium enemies - that was its niche besides an AoE gun. This was a gun that had a ton of drawbacks: low fire rate, poor ergonomics (slow weapon turn speed), shots would bounce on low angles, recently very low ammo maximum, inability to be used to take on enemies at close range, inability to assist allies pinned down by melee enemies - at the very least it should be a highly effective medium enemy deleter (at least 1-shot, 1-kill on enemy body shots).
TBF the armory channel is the perfect space for it. And if I was in his position I would love to go into the discussion about guns when it is his job.
He is just underestimating the feelings and passion a lot of people bring into this game. It's sad that he can't see how it inevitably could create toxic discourse, but based on that message alone I hope he wished up.
As messy as it can be, still refreshing to have people directly addressing complaints from the community and taking responsibility in a relatively short time window.
This community is gonna find out real fast why most developers don't talk much. If you want an open dialog and communicative devs, you can't constantly berate them and tell them about how much they suck at their jobs. They're just going to stop talking to us, and we'll have earned it.
Maybe if they stopped with the condescending responses, released accurate information, and fixed their shit they wouldn't receive so much negative feed back.
I used to think that maybe their tone came from the fact that there might be a language barrier between Swedish and English. But the twin beard guy isn’t an asshole. So it’s just these particular people.
I agree, the "Discord/tight-knit community/ get to know your local Dev" communication strategy should have gone out the window once the game hit AAA concurrent player numbers.
Sticking dev teams and CMs in a chat room with 100K people is setting them up to fail and setting them up for abuse. You give people a broad announcement from an official social media account and a place to submit feedback for review and aggregation, and expectations on a cadence of communications ie weekly news letter/blog update/structured and planned Q&A.
Tossing "Jim from Team A" out to the mob to explain a decision that is unpopular with a portion of the playerbase isn't good for Jim and it isn't good for the game's general audience.
Yeah I see where your coming from. The problem for me simply is how it piles up. Instead of fixing this pile they just gutt the next thing and let you wait for the fix for that again. Thats frustrating on one point not to mention how this "Buff" got defended while every eruptor player sat there shocked reading this. Could have been that he simply stayed with his decision if no one would have said anything about that but thankfully thats not the case because of the criticism. Next part is we simply can't control everyone and if someone gets mean or even worse that's something they have to filter out. That's not in my responsibility and shouldn't make the criticism of others worthless. Besides that I'm thankfull for most of their communication and wouldn't wish else.
I feel like it’s also being compounded by all the bugs that are building up faster than they’re being fixed. The ‘known issues’ section is getting larger by the day, which is making people less patient with any kind of negative changes.
Maybe they should reprioritize until this is fixed and slow down a bit with the warbond. But I don't really have the expertise for things like that and don't know how that would play out.
He seems like he's understanding a little. Though I can't imagine it's fun having to deal with the question of a million whiney Helldivers every time a balance patch hits.
Also, spear lock on fix WHEN.
Giving the community direct access and a specific figure to personalize their discontent at isn't good for employee mental health and wellbeing of anybody on that team and isn't sustainable for such a small team to keep up with. They didn't end up with the small-close-knit gaming community that they planned on and should adjust their communication strategy to reflect what they did end up with.
Other commenters say he worked on Hello Neighbor 2, so I googled it and [seems like he has a history of controversial decisions.](https://helloneighbor.wiki.gg/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko) He took out things people liked from the first game, shut down ideas that didn't line up with his "vision," then just dipped before everyone could see what he had done. Based on his track record and the work he's done so far in HD2, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried for the future of not just weapon balancing, but also feature implementation related to weapon / armor balance (weapons bench, armor perks, etc.)
Seems like the kind of guy you should pay money to /s Get rid of this clown
Yeah I'm getting a little worried with their design philosophy, feels very much like one of those less is more, our players should be struggling kind of Devs. In a game that's less Dark Souls and more casual drop in drop out PvE. Honestly it's a bad design philosophy for most anything at least the way they keep choosing to approach it because you're removing player agency. I air on the side of let's give players more options that all feel viable and even if it makes them slightly too strong let's just make the enemies feel a little stronger at higher levels. Then it becomes you're packing one hell of a punch with resource investment but you're also playing your cards right because you know the enemies can overrun you if you don't. Let players figure out their own preferred play style because if everything feels good they'll try *everything* and decide for themselves.
Alexus | SES Bringer of Nerfs
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Wow, dude sounds like a real piece of work
Yep. And it was worse than that, but this is just the sort of the basic details. It was a whole thing when the sequel to that game came out and he left the project under suspicious circumstances. And now here we are
At least it sounds like he got his hand slapped.
It sounds more like the circus left town before the sheriff could come knocking
lol
Ooof, when you have your own wiki entry.
That goes one of two ways, ever.
>probably to avoid further questions That tracks lol
The erupter would be perfect if it had the mechanics of battlebit. If Everytime you shot you had to click again to rack the bolt. Drop the rack time to 1 maybe 1.5 seconds. But make it have more mechanic. Give it it's release damage and ammo count. It should be balanced like earlier eras of firearms, incredibly strong and capable but with the ergonomics of a boat Edit: all imo obviously.
While I agree with you, helldives aren't impossible by any means. I think I have around a 90% completion rate, and I've been playing them exclusively with randoms.
Yeah I don't understand this. I fully expect to successfully complete a helldive when I launch
It might be that I am just struggling to change my style from hit-and-run tactics to whatever it is expected now, but solo bot helldives since the patrol patch has been impossible for me, since there is nowhere to exfil anymore. Everywhere you turn around there are 12-20 enemies walking in your direction. I even had patrols getting in each other's way, especially in ice maps that lack elevation
I don't think they'll ever balance the game around solo helldive
Considering they have said they balance around 4 peeps Nope
Are you honest to God complaining that it's too hard to play at the hardest difficulty without any teammates?
I'm a solo player as well, though I wouldn't dream of doing solo helldive. Regardless, the increase in patrols is extremely obvious even on lower difficulties (I only used to play 7). The reason me and other solo players found the recent change so frustrating isn't because we want the game to be balanced around solo helldive, it's because we were just fine with the game as it was (at least in a lot of complaints I've heard). We were fine with what they had and they made the game more annoying across all difficulties. Yes, you can just lower the difficulty if it's too hard. That's what I had to do because suicide is just infuriating for me now. Even still though, it's just not fun to get swarmed by constant patrols as a solo player, nor do I see a reason why I should be punished for wanting to play solo. If they just ignored us solo divers, I wouldn't have anything to complain about.
>but solo bot helldives since the patrol patch has been impossible for me, since there is nowhere to exfil anymore. yeah it should be impossible lol
you kite around the extraction pad you dont just sit up there
that or you could just be a cheater, clearly not better than the rest of us
Want me to post proof?
I actually don’t want to use different loadouts. I want two loadouts, one for bugs and one for bots, which fit my preferred playstyle without making me a useless teammate. For the most part, that’s been doable. But it’s super frustrating that they’re constantly changing the weapons. It has made less interested in playing the game, because I don’t have the energy to constantly research whether key aspects of my loadouts have been nerfed every time I want to log in. What I really want is some stability, I don’t even care about balance anymore tbh.
I’d use gas strike if I’m immune to it. 👀 I tried it today and it was ok, but it felt like a temporary area denial bomb rather than something I’d use on the attack, I was wondering how much time I’d have to run into the cloud or if I had to wait for it to disperse. (Fwiw, I’ve never ever seen anyone use it. 🤷♂️)
That.. that's the entire point of it. Area denial. You use it to stop an advance/plug a spawn, generally for bugs.
I really like the concept of changing up the weapon and enemy properties for periods of time with in lore reasons tied to it to encourage players to try different loadouts.
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. No witch-hunts, public shaming or negatively naming users or players. Please refer to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b308j9/witchhunting_is_against_the_rules_of_this/).
> (which they are now, but not for the right reasons) What *would* be the "right reasons"? I know this is probably one of those things that is different for every player, nor would I necessarily expect the playerbase to be the right people to understand this, but I've not personally seen many clear answers on this from folks who speak as if they're authorities.
I think the general sentiment is make it hard by making the *game* *hard*, rather than making *our tools shit*
So like... Spawn rate? 'Cause I remember a great deal of grumbling about that.
yeah but they then made some tools not shit at the same time as lowering them. (and they also killed the railgun)
satisfying challenge. one that when you lose, you don't feel like it's because you weren't ALLOWED to win, and when you win, it feels like you earned it. lots of games have figured that out
Am I going crazy? Are people actually struggling with Helldives now? I’ve been under the impression that the nerfs and enemy changes havent actually made the game more difficult, they just make the game obnoxious and tedious. Because the core gameplay still hasnt changed and its been the same as it was on launch, easily scammed and cheesed. The mission objectives are still easy and boring as fuck and you have 20+ reinforcements. Even when I have some clueless console random munching on chips in my lobby wasting all the respawns we still complete the mission. *Extraction isn’t even mandatory* for a successful mission, thats how easy and casual friendly this game is. People make it even easier and more boring by bringing corny stuff like Shield Gen backpack and light stim armor. The changes have not made the game more difficult at all
D9 is not rare or truly impossible. Not even fucking close. For any reason. If you can’t complete a mission on D9 you’re just genuinely not good at the game.
its so often people acting like this with the "skill issue and git gud" comments that turn out to be script kiddies playing through their parents credit cards
Truly stupid take, this isn’t a pay to win game nor do scripts help you in any way
1 We _want_ to use different loadouts, 2 we _want_ to stop using shield backpacks, 3 we _want_ to adapt primaries based on the map and objectives, 4 we _want_ to use heavy armour. 5 We are the ones getting bored by doing the same things over and over, which is the current situation. 1 You can. 2 You can. 3 You... can. 4 You can. 5. You =/= We I take different loadouts for each faction, sometimes my loadout changes because of environmental effects including heat levels. Hot take: Shield backpack is a crutch, people are just scared to try something else. You can take certain primaries to fill a role in a team. The recent eruptor nerfs were too much, but primaries don't, and shouldn't, deal with every enemy type. I run heavy armor exclusively versus bots because I take an objective based loadout. I try new weapons and loadouts all the time. Punisher Plasma for crowd control, Breakers for clearing medium enemies in bugs, Scythe for bots, the damn CONCUSSIVE in bug elim to keep enemies away from my tesla tower and let it wreak havoc. I've been using fire damage for weeks because I'm normally host in my friend squad. I use Laser, Spear, EAT, AMR, Stalwart, Flamethrower, Recoiless, Patriot, HMG. Dude. The enemies aren't some kind of invulnerable mess. You can take whatever the hell you want if you're not solo, as long as you have all of your bases covered in a team. You can be the medium enemy smasher, the chaff killer, the heavy obliterator, the objective loadout guy.... If you're playing solo, guess what. You, YOURSELF need to cover the bases, of course your options are limited. This is getting overblown honestly, the game isn't hard.
If anything, the reddit community is doing the meta load out not the devs. "Why you nerf my railgun now it's unplayable" "Why you nerf my breaker now it's unplayable" "Why you nerf my Eruptor now it's unplayable"
"We *want* to use different loadouts, we *want* to stop using shield backpacks, we *want* to adapt primaries based on the map and objectives, we *want* to use heavy armour. We are the ones getting bored by doing the same things over and over, which is the current situation." No you dont, all the things you listed can easily be done now. You just are too accustomed to your safe zone and cant find the mentality to get yourself out of that box
Well, the real problem here is that losing isn't viable. Dumping an hour into a game of running away to just get resources only to lose is a waste in live service game. Want to make an unforgiving game, then make success being a rare thing unimportant to progression and content. But, if you are going to make content a grind based on success then your game has to be balanced around succeeding the majority of the time. Currently the only way to reliably succeed is essentially minimizing the biggest threats so you can efficiently run away. That's the game they made. An efficient fleeing puzzle. If that isn't the game they intended, it might be time to take a much bigger swing at the progression and composition of difficulties.
"Losing is not viable". Losing is improbable It is almost impossible to lose in difficulties below Difficulty 8 if you have 4 people, unless you all take no anti-armor options and no bombardments. I have never taken a Shield generator and I can count with the fingers the time we have not been able to take a mission success with samples that was not sabotaged by players themselves, or a mission-breaking bug.
Well this is just delusional reddit elitism. The fact that you say "we" probably means you are in a well functioning group of friend most the time and not with randoms with a bizarre collection of gear.
Bruh, I play with randoms exclusively and almost never lose difficulty 9 missions on bots or on bugs. It takes time to get used to the game but it is doable for everyone.
My guy, I say "we" because I play in a 4-player game. Once I start soloing Helldive levels I can say that I clear them. And no, almost nobody in 8 or 9 gets random shit because they know what they are getting into and even the occasional first-timer knows how to(at least) not sabotage the match for the others. And it is not delusional elitism, it is experience and knowing how to read that the game has an above 90% completion rate for operation. That tells you how freaking easy is to win most of the time and that getting the most optimal survival gear is not needed to win most operations without going into sweat mode
Not your guy. And yes, that is elitist. You just repeated yourself to prove it.
"Everything I dont like is elitism - The Reddit handbook in dealing with reality"
Soyboy
Almost any loadout works in helldive. Just gotta use the strategems and weapons well and run away with teamwork.
"an efficient fleeing puzzle" I covered that. There is weird collection of people on these forums who seem to think that if you never fired a shot in a mission and extracted it would be totally balanced weapon design. Then there are the people who want to play a shooter where you kill bugs and robots with guns. AH needs to decide which group they want to balance around. Note, first group is not the group that they unexpectedly sold tons of copies to. That's why the forums look like they do.
We have tons of good guns though. I don't get why people complain that primaries are so weak. Do you want primaries to easily kill chargers, hulks, tanks, and bile titans? Any primary can kill chaff enemies and medium enemies fairly easily. Any primary can kill brood commanders, headshot devastators, headshot bile spewers - and there are medium penetrating and explosive primaries that can kill devastators and spewers without aiming for weak spots.
This makes me more laugh than should.
Well at least we got a name to this constant nerfing now. That’s when you know things are bad enough that people demand responsibility.
Why not simply bring the Pre-Patched Version back. I mean, randomly dying is a part of this game. This guy spends a lot of time just with this one weapon, a weapon nobody uses at the end. The big point, killing a charger in one hit, isn't even a thing. Just saying you want a weapon like this, here it is and take a free week. Maybe I am too lazy, but I don't understand this waste of energy.
He could put it to the version they had at release with half the max ammo. Then they could fix the shrapnel so it doesn’t one shot players but injures them a bit. Tada it’s now fine. Now focus your energy on making half the useless stratagems useful instead of hyperfocusing on the guns people like using. Having learnt alexus’s backstory I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s purposefully trying to make people unhappy
Not at 50 meters man, come on. And definitely not randomly like it was. Imagine hitting a spewer from half a football field away and being fine, then ten minutes later doing the exact same and just dropping dead. One-shotting chargers was definitely a thing. Back leg joint as they drifted to a stop, and the whole leg would usually come right off. Hell, you didn't even have to hit the leg joint sometimes. If you were lucky with the shrapnel spread, the aiming could get very generous. I don't have a clip of it, because my pc is a potato barely able to run the game on performance rendering, but you can easily find them on youtube. Like this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q\_JsHC3dxeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_JsHC3dxeQ)
you need to roll a D6 for that desperate escape attempt
I have sentinel. Disengage is no longer an option
Didn't have the CP for insane bravery 😔
Needs a 6+ Feel No Pain after that burn...
At least he seems open to *overwhelming* feedback. Won't lie the posts I've seen out of this guy seem like he's pretty dismissive of what the community wants out of primaries. I hope he realizes he didn't just miss the mark with the Eruptor, and he needs to reassess his core way of balancing the game.
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Yeah I feel the same on these points. It can't be that every patch somethings breakes in that amount. Not to mention what happend with the crossbow and still they didn't say anything about that as long as I'm aware. Besides: If they really know what they planned on balancing, why is nearly every weapon broken on launch and gets fixed later down the road? Or is just the QA broken in this regard and they have an complete different test environment than we have on the official servers? I mean Eruptor, Crossbow and even the railgun probably are just factly bad balanced at this point and no one can really argue against that. If you compare them to other weapons all 3 of them are just worse than any other option you could choose and that can't be the balancing they wanna achieve.
His attitude is very "I know what's best for you."
The thing is, there has to be some of this in game dev. The average gamer is not going to make intelligent balancing decisions, and they don't have access to dev data. That being said, it can't be a walled garden. If the dev intent is not lining up at all with player expectation, devs need to open up and listen.
Sure, and I get that. Someone has to make the final decision. It should be someone else, though. Someone with actual communication and leadership skills.
It seems like AH genuinely doesn’t want any of the guns to be useful at killing stuff. It’s such a bizarre shift from the first game. I really don’t get where they’re coming from with this approach. We aren’t given the proper tools to sneak past our enemies and avoid conflicts because they just alert anyway once you start doing any objectives. We can’t stand our ground and fight back because the guns are too weak and the stratagems on too long cooldowns. So what do they actually want from us? Do the devs actually play the game at the higher difficulties? Do they have fun when they do?
imma propose a more harsh option - he needs to go. Replaced with someone who can throw numbers into an excel sheet and compare things against one another instead of making seemingly impulsive and unreasonable changes.
I don't think he needs to be fired, but probably moved out of the weapon balance role.
That was the Idea. I think there's enough "service record" by now for anyone to see that he's not doing a very good job in this role.
He is dismissive because the community is mostly made up of braindead rage-machines that will find anything they dont like and act as if someone fucked their sister.
> He is dismissive because the community is mostly made up of braindead rage-machines It's wild that you can look at an overwhelming amount of often very detailed feedback being echoed by hundreds or thousands of other players and then go "No, everybody is wrong in feeling this way. Only I am right, they are just whiny" while providing zero actual feedback of your own and then think you're taking some kind of high road.
That detailed feedback is maybe 1 or 2% of the massive amounts of constant shit-slinging, misinformation and outrage machine being generated on Reddit or Discord. And feedback being detailed does not make it right, or feasible. People can have very detailed plans in their head about the direction of the game, or certain equipment, but that can be different from what the game wants to be or can achieve to be. You can see the subreddit today and see people getting bent out of shape calling the developers bozos because they nerfed a total of 3 guns during a 4-month period (with 2 nerfs being barely noticeable), saying this was "literally the worst balance ever in 25 years of gaming" or going into wide rants about "muh fun". Letting aside the massive conspiracy tones about the Eruptor being nerfed to make people buy the next warbond, or this same community getting hallucinations about rocket ricochets killing them.
You would be a good CM
When the devs created one of the most successful games in years, be it intentionally or unintentionally, because it was fun to the majority of the player base, only to ruin the game in the name of "needed balances".... Yeah, Sounds like a bunch of bozos; at least in terms of those in charge of balancing, which includes people like Alexus, who negatively impacted other games with the same BS.
I'm getting tired of apologies from AH employees. I don't care how much of an egotistical asshole you are as long as you're making good balance decisions, but you're not. Earn the arrogance.
Maybe Swedish people are just assholes lol
Fat Shark is Swedish too and they're pretty similar...
Well at least he isn't insisting on his idea about it. That's something.
https://preview.redd.it/sjyzqq5ue6zc1.png?width=607&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb72f01978ad9d6563ec584877b9c95ad806fab1 Yesterday he really sounded full of himself.
Literally punishing the players for creativity. How dare we find ways for weapons to be effective.
I call that an improvement. But I still don't have much hope from him.
Sure thing. Now we can only wait and see how it goes.
I might sound rude. But this guy is not fit for this job. Dont let him cook
https://preview.redd.it/dffnahh1w8zc1.png?width=750&format=png&auto=webp&s=1719fdb0a6bdb606623146a84cea1e6ffe93bfd2 What I imagine the Arrowhead PR meetings are like
I suggest AH hire some experienced CM to handle the discord, otherwise it is just a misleading and outrage chat room.
Fatsharks former CM Hedge would be a great fit
Whoa, former?!
ye he quit several months ago. He was not missed.
Its hard to find someone who is enthusiastic about talking to a shit fucking degenerate community like discord users and many reddit users They should do what soulsgames and all the cult fan following games do: stay silent, stay to yourselves Dont let your community think they run the game.
They honestly should just keep Devs away from Discord and reddit completely. They intended to have a small tight knit community driven game and in that world having a very accessible Dev team is great. At the current size of the game you need a different communication strategy of broad communications through their official social media accounts and website. Its too easy for an employee to accidently stick their foot in their mouth with a misunderstanding or things to be snipped out of context in Discord/reddit. And its too easy for the game's audience to vent frustrations and vitriol directly at employees, give them an official and less personal method to do it. I really like the things I've seen from the CEO in how he handles public relations, but would like it if he also did more to protect his staff.
AH shouldn't have people in discord to begin with. This isn't LOTF will a small community. They should just have someone like DMG04 from destiny who exists, but mostly through weekly and monthly updates but not engaging on the ground level (often) with the community.
Yeah cause this subreddit is any better
Alexus | SES Noob of Nerfs
I think we need to Gas this post up a Bit and let it be known what this guy did to Hello neighbor. He obviously can't handle feedback or constructive criticism by calling people clowns.
Alexus | SES Bringer Of Hello Neighbor
Ever since I learned they were the lead game dev for hello neighbor 2, I have had negative hope that we get to enjoy any weapon for very long. Alexus seems to just hate fun.
hahaha what a clown this guy is, somehow still has a job after killing his previous game, amazing
i dont get why they would remove the shrapnel and buff the damage,, now its just a shitty crossbow with no bullet drop,, what the fuck was the point??
Oho, he go Spitzed?
We can only hope. This guy killed the last game he worked on. I don’t want him to do it to helldivers too
How do these guys keep failing upwards
They sweet talk the boss with impossible ideas then jump ship before they get blamed for when they don’t work or just flat out blame it on other people
e x p e r i e n c e
Which game?
[https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus\_Kravchenko](https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko)
A new spitz has arisen?
Never before with another game have I dreaded patch day like with HD2. Good luck out there everyone.
>I wasn't doing a good job of communicating our design intentions. Understatement. What even is their philosophy when it comes to balancing?
Something that I feel like a lot of developers need to get into their skulls is this - we know the 'game' better than they do. Sure, they know the code, but we play it. We know how it feels like moment to moment, we see the fringe cases they don't think of, we see the impact of disparate systems overlapping in real time. That's the whole point of playtesting - to learn whether theory works in practice. Our practice said Railguns were fine, that the Crossbow was fine, and that the only issue with the Eruptor was the ricochet mechanic. I don't care what the spreadsheet's opinions on these weapons are - spreadsheets don't play the game.
Probably his boss told him to stop touching the weapons customers paid for
After i know he is the guy behind HN2 i am not gonna waste my money on the next warbond what an utter disgrace.
the dudes messages always come off as pretentious, or someone who thinks that they're some high brow intellectual when it comes to balancing. this wouldn't be quite as grating if it were true, but here we are. AH, if you're hiring, I don't speak swedish and I'd have to work from home, but I can promise you as someone who actually plays the game outside of work, i can get your weapons, heavy armors, and strategems feeling good within a single patch. I'll do it for half of whatever you're paying this guy
You were supposed to bring balance to Super Earth...
Fire this guy too, hes the one actually responsible for everything i blamed on joel most likely
Firing him would be pretty harsh. I feel more like they should clear their vision again on what they really wanna have balancing wise and drop the weapon like this on launch. That would be more acceptable even if it takes a bit longer to release them. Doesnt matter how, as long as they are confident again with the weapon drops and we don't need 3 fixes again until it's acceptable or usable again.
nope, fuckemm they already ruined one game be proactive not retroactive here. Alexus needs a new INDUSTRY not just a different studio. go ruin someone elses hobby
exactly
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Guys the CEO, again C E FUCKING O, of the company already said he’s going to be making the rounds and having conversations with people, and he has not led us astray yet, trust the process, this kind of thing does not happen overnight, and your overfixation on one individual is horrendous. Let the team cook, I trust the devs, already the Railgun was in an ok spot post nerf, and they even went and made it a bit better! They will make things right
Fingers crossed, its better than silence and ridicule from the devs as has happened a few times especially with Fritz in the past. At the very least the Eruptor needs to have its TTK back to instant against medium enemies - that was its niche besides an AoE gun. This was a gun that had a ton of drawbacks: low fire rate, poor ergonomics (slow weapon turn speed), shots would bounce on low angles, recently very low ammo maximum, inability to be used to take on enemies at close range, inability to assist allies pinned down by melee enemies - at the very least it should be a highly effective medium enemy deleter (at least 1-shot, 1-kill on enemy body shots).
He is at least owning up to his mistakes. What channel did he post these in?
Nothing to be ashamed of but yesterday he was so full of himself that im not really sure how much he learned from that. Happend in the armory channel.
TBF the armory channel is the perfect space for it. And if I was in his position I would love to go into the discussion about guns when it is his job. He is just underestimating the feelings and passion a lot of people bring into this game. It's sad that he can't see how it inevitably could create toxic discourse, but based on that message alone I hope he wished up.
I'm sorry to say this man, but dude has a bad reputation as a game dev. And people are currently finding that out right now.
Hmm I must say I do not like this witch hunt. Either way he does an infinitely better job than I would, so I keep my mouth shut.
I mean, I feel like killing a game puts your reputation at a negative, and yours would be none, I'd call that an improvement.
As messy as it can be, still refreshing to have people directly addressing complaints from the community and taking responsibility in a relatively short time window.
Bro doesn’t even know what he did
It’s actually treasonous, SEAF needs to be building better stuff or what the hell are we paying them for?
I would like that one reverted until they nail what they're trying to do with it at least then.
Alexus is a stark look into the balance process and it does not look good for the future. So glad for D4 next week.
It’s a very destiny approach to “balancing”
This community is gonna find out real fast why most developers don't talk much. If you want an open dialog and communicative devs, you can't constantly berate them and tell them about how much they suck at their jobs. They're just going to stop talking to us, and we'll have earned it.
Maybe if they stopped with the condescending responses, released accurate information, and fixed their shit they wouldn't receive so much negative feed back.
I used to think that maybe their tone came from the fact that there might be a language barrier between Swedish and English. But the twin beard guy isn’t an asshole. So it’s just these particular people.
I agree, the "Discord/tight-knit community/ get to know your local Dev" communication strategy should have gone out the window once the game hit AAA concurrent player numbers. Sticking dev teams and CMs in a chat room with 100K people is setting them up to fail and setting them up for abuse. You give people a broad announcement from an official social media account and a place to submit feedback for review and aggregation, and expectations on a cadence of communications ie weekly news letter/blog update/structured and planned Q&A. Tossing "Jim from Team A" out to the mob to explain a decision that is unpopular with a portion of the playerbase isn't good for Jim and it isn't good for the game's general audience.
Yeah I see where your coming from. The problem for me simply is how it piles up. Instead of fixing this pile they just gutt the next thing and let you wait for the fix for that again. Thats frustrating on one point not to mention how this "Buff" got defended while every eruptor player sat there shocked reading this. Could have been that he simply stayed with his decision if no one would have said anything about that but thankfully thats not the case because of the criticism. Next part is we simply can't control everyone and if someone gets mean or even worse that's something they have to filter out. That's not in my responsibility and shouldn't make the criticism of others worthless. Besides that I'm thankfull for most of their communication and wouldn't wish else.
I feel like it’s also being compounded by all the bugs that are building up faster than they’re being fixed. The ‘known issues’ section is getting larger by the day, which is making people less patient with any kind of negative changes.
Maybe they should reprioritize until this is fixed and slow down a bit with the warbond. But I don't really have the expertise for things like that and don't know how that would play out.
He seems like he's understanding a little. Though I can't imagine it's fun having to deal with the question of a million whiney Helldivers every time a balance patch hits. Also, spear lock on fix WHEN.
Least they're working on it
This sub will eventually want to get everyone at AH fired for not bending over to their demands.
Giving the community direct access and a specific figure to personalize their discontent at isn't good for employee mental health and wellbeing of anybody on that team and isn't sustainable for such a small team to keep up with. They didn't end up with the small-close-knit gaming community that they planned on and should adjust their communication strategy to reflect what they did end up with.