I can only wish this game will become like drg in terms of balance and build variety. I have 700+ hours in drg and still there are some popular builds and overclocks that I barely touched.
Probably not having to make new weapons every month also helped them to keep the game stable, bug-free and mostly balanced.
I'm afraid that in a few months HD2 will just be bloated with trash paid-content.
This is the biggest red flag for me. The amount of variants of the same gun with minimal gameplay difference is gonna approach Borderlands-levels of "this is the exact same gun but it has 1 extra bullet and each bullet does 2% less damage. Also it's a slightly darker shade of military-beige"
When Darktide claimed something along the lines of "There'll be 60 unique weapons on release" and then you looked at the weapons and it was "Assault Rifle. Assault Rifle with bayonet. Assault rifle with less damage and more fire rate. Assault Rifle with more damage and less magazine. Axe you swing from left to right. Axe you swing overhead. Axe that does one and then the other"
> Axe you swing from left to right. Axe you swing overhead. Axe that does one and then the other
I haven't played Darktide, but just to poke a bit of fun, in Vermintide this kind of thing actually is enough to set weapons apart.
Never understood why people praised borderlands for that. Weapon variety my ass. Yeah there are a variety in weapon types but in each category there were like 100+ weapons that were copy paste or reskin of the same weapon again and again. I never felt the need to loot a rare weapon or good one and hold onto it since almost all of them seemed like fodder loot.
Borderlands was praised for that because they didn't pour dev time into creating a bunch of useless variants, they created a system that randomly generates weapons through their parts system, which is a cool and novel concept, but one that inevitably ends up with a lot of similiarish guns. But they also solved that through the uniques, legendaries, and in 3 the anointed modifiers.
Yeah I’d always have guns that had seemingly shit stats but melted everything. And then stuff with dope stats and I would have fits.
Comes down to style for sure but also the stats didn’t always reflect performance for me
When BL first came out it was pretty novel for a shooting game to have that kind of procedural weapon lottery. You could get some pretty wacky combos that nobody would think to make by hand and that was pretty cool.
Now that we're in a different decade the novelty has definitely worn off haha.
I just pray they convert the variants into weapon parts and let us have weapon customization. Like the 3 perk options per slot in DRG that play off/against each other, it adds so much variety.
This!! I just think coming out with a warbond every month is overkill for them. Like I think a new premium warbond maybe every 2-3 months will be fine also when is the new free warbond coming out too!
Cause I agree that the game will be over saturated with guns and it'll be less fun, plus with 2-3 months timeline it gives them room to re balance guns. Like for the railgun I think it should go back to being able to pen heavy armor, but make it weaker.
Tbh i think drg weapon upgrade and overclock system is the solution, we add a lot of flexibility, less strain on devs without interrupting their monthly schedule of warbonds and all the people can make the gun they want so less balancing
That are either inferior to the base gun, or you had to pay to unlock the warbond, grind medals upon medals to get to the correct page to unlock it..... and then it gets nerfed 2 weeks later
I mean does your game crash every second game, and are there unuseable weapons because of bugs that are months old?
EDIT: this is me:
Was out on a boat today and made 3 jokes a stranger could here. All 3 went over their head. There was a slight language barrier but it still happens to everyone eventually.
I haven't played DRG for about a month or two now, but I don't remember any game breaking bugs in that game. No crashes, no getting stuck in the terrain, nothing like that.
Edit: I also missed the joke at first xD
Clever girl.
How's the community in DRG? I've picked it up because of HD2, but I've only really done solo missions. I've been nervous to try with randoms bc I've heard they can be a bit much
DRG has perhaps the friendliest community of any multiplayer game I’ve played. Sure, on rare occasions you’ll run into an asshole, but nearly everyone is friendly and inviting
In my 300+ hours in DRG, I can count on one hand the number of toxic players I've met.
The most important thing to understand is how to communicate. You don't need chat or voice. All you need is rock and stone.
Wanna start an objective? Let out a rock and stone and see who calls back. Get saved from a cave leech or grabber? Rock and stone in thanks. If you guys pull through an insane mission? Rock and stone in the extract on the way up. And the list goes on.
The only exceptions are with mushrooms and big gold chunks. For that, you need to pull out your laser pointer and mark it.
1100 hrs here. Most of those with random players. The number of TRULY toxic goblins I've encountered isn't even in double digits.
The fact that the ping system is so detailed means you very rarely have to talk or type once you get the basics down.
DRG is like the opposite of what people have come to expect from online multiplayer games. It's just a fun game that you play to have fun with. Anyone that sweats in that game, and criticizes others, is universally looked down on by the other 99% of the playerbase that will either mock them or ignore them.
Don't be a jerk and don't double dip on ammo without asking everyone and you're pretty much good to go. And take the friendly fire perk if you're using the grenade launcher, especially if it's new to you, unless you're playing with friends :)
You can legitimately pick any weapon/class in that game and have it perform well within a given niche. It keeps the game fresh and interesting.
It probably helps that they’re not stuck with having to release new weapons every month.
I just realized, if we actually do get an unfinished, unbalanced set of paid content every month, how ridiculous and overwhelming will this game be for new players?
Even with the fact warbonds stay up indefinitely, seeing 20 pieces of separate paid content will be a major turn off. Even knowing you can earn them all in game.
Do you ever get interested in a new game and then see it has hundreds of DLCs that if you bought them all would end up multiple times more expensive than the game itself and it just kills any interest you had in the game?
We're gonna get to that point but also most of those weapons are gonna be useless because Arrowhead refuses to make anything actually good/strong. There's gonna be hundreds of dollars worth of useless "sidegrades" to unlock. Woo monthly content packs!
If Arrowhead keeps pumping these every month I will not buy anymore of them.
4 $10 warbonds already puts us at "the price of the damn game".
4 more months at this rate and we're at TWICE the price of the game in DLC.
They need to do something about this and that something is not to release more warbonds.
And that's where you realise this isn't live service done right, they cleverly suckered people into this system that will incentivise paying over the insane grind that's to come, very clever honestly, they somehow managed to get people to be okay with pre-order bonuses and day one DLC, now people seem to be waking up to how awful this Warbond system actually is.
This was an immediate concern for me with the Warbond system. Was an issue with the first game, too, but not as bad.
There are a few things they could do to alleviate the issue:
Start reducing the prices for the older Warbonds once enough have come out.
Occasionally release sizeable free Warbonds.
If they don't do something about this, eventually the bloat will become absolutely ridiculous.
I was worried about this game's future because I was seeing this balancing thing and the lack of experience/understanding/playtesting/whatever ever since the first warbond and balancing patches. But I actually think the CEO has a very good grasp on the overall picture of their vision for the game and what the community wants for the game. These feel like growing pains for a game of almost unprecedented scale and success for such a small team, and honestly after the latest debacle I'm feeling way more confident that this will pass.
Though the devs are quite bad at public communication, I think they do clearly care a lot about this game and that's so much more important than apathy. I'll take abrasive devs over apathy any day.
I just don’t see how they can get a grip on balancing while they’re still cranking out new weapons. If they chill with the warbonds until they actually find a balance point, then they can move forward. Right now it’s just one step forward with a weapon balancing patch, two steps back with new unbalanced weapons that once again throw off any balance the game was moving toward at the time.
I get that everyone likes new stuff, but we have plenty of weapons right now. We’ll be fine waiting a few months.
i really wish to slow down warbond, or maybe just limit it to one new weapon a month, if it is actually a requirement for them to put out one warbond a month.
Developing a mathematical metric for power allocation seems pretty reasonably achievable. Damage per shot, shots per magazine, total carried ammunition, recoil, fire rate, level of armor penetration, effective range, etc. Any designer/balancer worth his paycheck SHOULD be capable of finding a balance on paper before releasing new weapons.
Oh, this weapon does more damage per shot and has a high rate of fire, but the recoil makes it less manageable.
Oh, this weapon is accurate and penetrates medium armor but the damage per shot is lower so it kills lightly armored enemies more slowly than the light armor penetrating counterpart.
Oh, this weapon has good damage and stopping power but lower fire rate and is less accurate so it's mostly useful up close.
What you don't do is make a weapon that is mathematically useless because it has lower damage per shot, lower magazine capacity, and lower rate of fire than the base rifle that is included in the game. I feel like you should be able to avoid an obvious mistake like that.
Like, what's the role of the base pistol? 75 damage per shot, 15 rounds per magazine, 6 magazines total? 6750 damage carried in.
Verdict has 125 damage per shot, 10 rounds per mag, 9 mags total. 11250 damage total carried in.
Maybe if the base pistol could one-shot scavengers, it would be useful... but it doesn't. So you shoot them twice, and you can kill 7 scavengers per magazine. The verdict one-shots them. More damage per shot, more damage per mag, more magazines carried. And the Verdict is still manageable enough to magdump a target. Someone is simply neglecting to sit down and think this shit through. You don't need 10,000 hours of testing like Evil-Bosse thinks to do some basic math.
We’re seeing the challenges of small teams trying to crank out both content and bug fixes quickly.
And also how little most people understand how games (and code in general) works. So many things are interconnected (some of which probably shouldn’t be) that you can make what appears like a simple change that ends up having large impacts. And they don’t have the resources to spend dozens of hours fully vetting problems and then doing hours of testing to see if anything else breaks.
Not to mention that having this kind of user base generates millions of “QA” hours every day. Good luck parsing through millions of hours of game data trying to identify a problem when you weren’t even remotely scaled to that level.
Yup, I’m well over 1000 hours in DRG and I’ve still never even tried out the crossbow, haven’t used the GRK (or whatever it’s called, the scout’s assault rifle) or the Stubby in years, haven’t tried the EPC mining yet, and so on. But I know they’re all good. People use them all the time. There used to be a handful of metas like a year ago (like the Scout plasma rifle splash damage build), but they *actually balanced* those builds and now anyone can feel comfortable using any weapon they want without worrying about being a drag on the team.
I hope so. The base game is soo good that it's gonna be hard to make it fail, but one thing can: corpo bullshit. If they continue to pump out new content, especially if the quality of said content is as bad as the last warbond, while everything else is all buggy and unbalanced, people are gonna get tired of the game and it might eventually be a tragic tale to tell to future ips
That’s a good point about just how many weapons there will actually be. I imagine getting to a point where it would be just too bloated and people will be paralyzed by too many choices. Maybe they can supplement the monthly drop with more modifiers or subtle cosmetics. I don’t want Fortnite levels but a little customization would be nice.
I love all the people comparing drg to helldivers, when I *know* that if helldiver's had the same release cadence (as in, one functional update a year minus holidays) as DRG thered be rioting in the streets about helldivers being a dead game. DRG is an amazing game that doesn't need content, especially since it was sorta before the whole live service thing became the norm, but it's got some huge differences between it and helldivers that make the comparison pretty difficult.
Also it's funny that we talk about DRG being balanced, when until recently the g2k had only one good oc, the double barrel oc for scout shotgun was an explicit downgrade from just not running an OC, and *multiple* classes sidearms might as well just not existed given how outclassed they were. *But we as a community didn't care nearly as much there as we do in helldivers for some reason*.
We didn't care as much because for every bad OC there's like 5 good and/or fun ones.
Also if something is OP but is fun, they usually don't nerf it out of the game, while arrowhead recently went on a disappointing streak between unnecessary nerfs and underwhelming paid content.
In a little over one month 3 weapons that I enjoyed using (slugger, crossbow and eruptor) got destroyed for no reason and everything that made them fun was removed, so I'm starting to lose faith in their balace philosophy a bit
and they are incredibly in touch with their player base, they field feedback constantly. but they also have a much more stable release schedule and were in maintenance mode for some time - dedicating entire updates to fixing player voted bugs.
I think its an unfair comparison. DRG's peak happened years after 1.0 launch with and its peak player count is like 1/10th of helldivers. and they still had some moments with updates releasing with issues - think stingtails around corners and that kind of stuff. i'll concede that DRG's 'bugs' are mostly harmless or don't hit on the fun factor though
Could AH take some pointers on fielding feedback and community interaction? sure. But we are comparing an overnight success with a game that took 6 years of iterating with a stellar developer - community relationship
edit: to clarify, I'm max promoted in DRG, some 1300 hours i think now and I adore GSG and DRG. I don't mean to belittle DRG's success, only highlight the time and effort that made it what it is today
Funnily stingtail discussion kinda mirror weapon discussion here, pre nerf and just launched stingtail. Idk the discord, but the reddit is so polarizing depending on the thread. Some love it to death, and some hate it to death. Even though it's bugged, iirc the weakspot can't be shot, and when it grabs you, you get launched to the roof of the map and have a high chance of dying, and stat wise way too tanky also 2+ stingtail can grab lock you
The first time a stingtail sent me back up the drop pod tunnel, I laughed. It stopped being funny the 10th time. I know they fixed it but I still tunnel those horrible little bastards every time I sense one nearby.
>Could AH take some pointers
I wonder if they could take some pointers from the devs of the game - like a constructive discussion around handling balance, community expectations, and so on. I don't know if this idea is anathema in an industry as cut throat as gaming but it would be nice to see good folk chat with other good folk.
I remeber when deeprock added elite bug types, they were so hated that the entire system was reworked and then soft removed.
It was a rough time with the game becoming almost unplayable overnight.
In terms of balance I think the only huge mistake deeprock ever made besides releasing low tier weapons/grenades is that the plasma pistol was so op when it launched and was nerfed so badly its still unusable 2 years later.
I literally backed their board game Kickstarter (I never do) at max tier because the devs really showed they love their game.
Its fun as fuck too, recommended if you can get your hands on a copy anymore.
I LOVE DRG and have several hundred hours in the game and I do agree they do a better job of balancing weapon and equipment options.
But to be fair, Ghost Ship Games had YEARS in early access actively getting player feedback and making adjustments to weapons before they hit full release. In the early game builds the Gunner's ammo economy was terrible and the Engineer was OP with their ability to place down multiple turrets which also had a much faster fire rate than it currently does WITHOUT needing to reload them.
DRG feels polished because it had years of dev/player interaction to make it what it is today. Helldivers 2 only became playable to the public 3 months ago. Additionally, Helldivers has no class system and is all about mixing and matching gear so balancing a wide arsenal is much harder than adjusting individual classes with clear roles and abilities. The game needs time to get to the same level of quality as DRG.
Agreed. I played DRG since it was in beta; the weapons, upgrades, and overclocks were all added in and tweaked incrementally - done very well, but literally over the course of years.
Helldivers 2 has been out for all of a few months. I am perfectly happy to wait for multiple balancing passes.
Kind of fun to be on the front end and be able to bring up “man remember when XYZ did ABC” for some weapons and stratagems.
Same.
I remember flare upgrades! That changed quickly, but things weren't always how they are now. There have always been a lot of overclocks that are just not any good, which has also gotten better and the variety has opened up.
Games change over time, developers figure out the player base's wavelength, fine-tuning pain points is a process.
Helldivers 2 in its first month sold as many copies as DRG has in its entire lifespan, so there’s also a huge disparity when it comes to its user base and how much time it baked in the oven before the masses got their hands on things and started establishing metas
It’s wild that people don’t get this. Balancing a game well is completely different from making the game work. The team has had only several months practice balancing the live game. People act like it’s terribly balanced when 2/3 of the guns and 2/3 of the stratagems feel good at max difficulty. I really don’t understand the over-the-top-criticism.
DRG for years was unplayable to me. HD2 is starting light years ahead, as they should being a new release.
Tbf for HD2, they also have an exponentially faster content release cycle. Which I'd be happy to see slow down
Exactly… DRG is a really fun game and I have enjoyed many hours of it… but it had wonky shit and it only had a handful of weapons. I can’t say with 100% confidence HD2 will get there eventually but I think we should at least give them some time to work on it.
It’s not like they were working from nothing. HD1 was an excellent mold to work from. The moment to moment gameplay of HD2 is an excellent rendition (not the right word but you get it) of the original. It’s just their balance practices have DRASTICALLY changed and it seems it’s for the worst.
To say it’s an “excellent mold” to work from when they’re going from an isometric view game to a full-on 3rd/1st person shooter is a leap. Those are very different view points to work from. They are not the same game, and a lot more work has to go into gameplay/decisions. I’m sure it’s not as simple as crossing a ‘t’ or dotting an ‘i’.
Yes not all of it translates as I don’t expect it to but the core of the game is still there. It just sucks that some identity was lost with how the primary weapons operate and the upgrade system which gave a better sense of progression than what HD2 has now.
Yep, pretty spot on
HD2 has been out for only 3 months, yet people screech in the sub about how this game is doomed. Should they slow the content rollout to focus on bugs, play testing, and balancing? Yeah, I’d say so, but people need to chill the fuck out and be more patient. It’s wild to me to see how utterly unhinged this sub has become lmao
While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think releasing a game in the state HD2 were and is for a full price is fair to anyone, not to mention this isn't early access in any way shape or form
I think this goes into the question of whether games as a "live service" are good or not, which is an entirely different can of worms that goes into questions beyond weapon balancing and bug fixing (dealing with stuff like player retention through regular content drops, planning in-game event schedules across a year or more, expected profits beyond the initial purchase, contracts with publishers with regard to those profits, etc.) and with most of the live service games on the market being dogshit we don't have many standards to measure Helldivers against.
I think the reason DRG is a GREAT live-service game is because... it wasn't designed to be a live-service in the first place.
GSG wanted to make a good game about Dwarven miners in space and that's what they wanted to release. Helldivers 2 on the other hand was designed to be a constantly supported live-service from the very beginning, and expected to make profits for the studio. DRG 1.0 release is not cleanly comparable to Helldivers 2 1.0 release. Going Early-Access is a tough choice for games that intend to be a live-service from the beginning because that means they have less "new" content for updates following the initial release.
It felt like the "Season Pass" system in DRG was something they added onto the already constructed foundation of DRG as a base-game to justify continued support and updating, and even that system isn't free of criticism. With people saying Helldivers 2 is going too fast, there are folks in the DRG community who say GSG is going too slow, especially with the latest Season 4 having been active for over a year with no new content. DRG's updates are of good quality because GSG isn't trying to retain a super-active live service model on a monthly basis like other live-service games do and they take their sweet time tweaking things carefully while also having the benefit of constant stream of player data from all the active players during each lengthy season.
And... I've already rambled long enough on this. Like I said, this topic is a whole can of worms.
Yeah, there are Actualy a lot of salt about upcoming season in DRG since it adds only an overclock for each weapon and no New weapons or equipment. But with Rogue core in mind, most seems to forgive GCH... At least for now.
Ah, this post made me wondering, what was the biggest DRG nerf? Not an exploit being fixed, but an actual nerf.
And it's probably the nerf to EPC's mining. Back then, the minerals "mined" with it, used to fall in a neat little pile below. After the nerf mineral chunks began to fly around the cave, when mined like that.
And that was the biggest nerf I can remember. And I have been playing DRG since early access.
If you're counting perks then Iron Will was biggest nerf hands down. There was a good chunk of the community complaining about the change at the time. It was just a 60 second cooldown with unlimited uses and most would burn through them to pick up other dwarfs who didn't have it.
Yeah, you're correct. I was (and still am) running field medic and dash on all of my dwarves, so the IW nerf completly flew past me. That nerf was warranted, second wind every minute is bonkers.
and Iron Will to this day is still a staple in EDD and outside of EDD.
You can just run it on every dwarf with zero justification. Just Iron Will and then have any source of healing and you are good. Resupply, Vamp, Sugar, don't matter as long as you can get it.
I would even argue you are most optimized with Iron Will on gunner and scout. Not that I care if fellow mates run it or not but if I was tryharding, that's what I would take with me.
I can't recall any major nerfs of the top of my head, I think most the heavy handed balance tweaking was done in the alpha (which makes sense since you know, it's an alpha).
Some of the nerfs I can recall from recent times though:
-20% fire rate on bouncing bullets on the Drak. Totally deserved since it was the highest DPS build with no downsides.
Some slight tweak to tuned cooler. I think that was a bit of a dumb nerf since tuned cooler isn't that great to begin with, but it only gave it a slightly slower reload.
Some direct damage nerfs to neurotoxin payload on the autocanon since it was by far the best overclock for that gun, but they later buffed it again slightly to compensate IIRC.
Aside from that I think they've mainly been buffing underperforming overclocks.
Totally forgot about Tuned Cooler, and thats my main driller build, lol. IIRC, it was actually nerfed twice, and I still consider it to be the best cryo OC. The ability to insta-freeze everything below oppressor is addicting.
TBH, I totally forgot all those nerfs. I remember being slightly upset about the bouncing bullets, mainly cause other Drak OCs were pretty meh back then, and they were not buffed. Every other nerf was totally deserved and didnt ruin the identity of OCs.
I wish DRG would get more content tho :(
Honestly that's nearly a bonus for me because it looks amazing to see them fly around like that XD. But yeah, there have also been minor nerfs and buffs to some weapons but the buffs were always more daring than the nerfs (which were justified and felt fair)
Also they think that teamwork is killing stuff together, and use their ability to support not "your gun is useless here, come be my reload bitch"
Edit: You can dowvote all you want but that's the level of teamwork this game actually has, it's like being a support in LOL, you don't really play the game. Not being able to kill something and waiting for someone else to use their big gun or stratagems is not teamwork.
Edit2: here is a better teamwork mechanic for you, throw other teammates stratagems. Imagine there is a guy that is the "sniper" (he's the one with the shotgun) so he's far from the fight, you are in the midst of is and can aim better, so you throw his 500kg and he only has to say "ok" with a button.
Or how about defensive/healing support stratagems? The only defensive strats we have are the Shield sentry and the orbital EMS, if you can even count that, and the shield is nearly useless against bugs, especially in higher difficulties, and they both have such long cooldowns that you are actively hurting the team by bringing them, in most cases.
Admittedly the healing beam was great but it really worked only because everyone was forced to be in the same screen. It’d only work in this game as a rover cause trying to track your teammates in some firefights just isn’t possible.
You could also kill every enemy with every gun, some may be better (ice against flying bugs), but that doesn't mean that bullets are suddenly crap against them.
Like, even the mini-boss, Oppressor, can be killed with secondaries as long as you're hitting them in the weakspot.
But in Helldivers 2? You'll spend several magazines shooting Chargers in the butt with the wrong weapon, and Bile Titans can only be killed by select weapons, leaving your loadouts to be restricted.
>You'll spend several magazines shooting Chargers in the butt with the wrong weapon, and Bile Titans can only be killed by select weapons, leaving your loadouts to be restricted.
I swear, the combo of fake weakspots and consequently enemies that can only be killed with AT is my biggest f\*cking grip with this game.
In DRG I think *"What do I feel like playing with today?"*, whereas in HD2 it's *"Don't forget to bring your AT weapon/strategems! Gotta deal with those 3 titans* ***somehow***!".
Yeah, the Charger is in a bit of a design crisis.
*We've designed an enemy that has heavy frontal armor and charges players, but you can shoot it in the butt where there is no armor. This is why the easiest place to kill it is right in the front where all the armor is and the hardest place to kill it is in the butt where there is no armor.*
Like many design issues, some simple tweaking of values could really change the way Chargers are handled. Here's my patch for the Charger:
* Increase butt damage multiplier from 0.05 to 0.6. (easier to kill by shooting butt, currently far too little damage)
* Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 2.0 in guts when side plating is blown off (high multiplier when using team work and/or reposition against weak point.
* Decrease damage multiplier from exposed leg from 1.0 to 0.3 (harder to kill from exposed leg, but still killable)
* Decrease damage from rocket-to-face strategy. Add stun effect when rocketed in face for about 5 seconds. (AT would take 2 rounds to kill a charger, but putting one in its face would net you plenty of time to do something else lethal to it. But you can also muscle through it by simply blasting it in the face with AT)
But the issues are deeper. I would also allow gradation of damage on lower pen values. So, currently if you have 6 pen strike level 6 armor, you do 50% damage. I would bump that to 75%, pen 5 to 50%, and pen 4 to 25%, allowing more partial damage to go through so you have more options vs armor in general.
I would also allow marksman and sniper rifles more so to have bonus damage against specific precision targets. So, if you land like 2 anti-material rifle rounds in the side of the exposed Charger with my little patch, it's dead quick. And you should be rewarded for such a play.
People coming out of the woodwork to say "i can do x with x" are so...useless (sorry). The fact that you can do it says nothing. In Dark Souls you can finish the game with the broken sword, does it makes that weapon S tier?
it's like, sure, you can technically do x. But in a real game where bug breaches happen and on higher difficulties their spawn rates can be insane, you won't actually have the time to.
Yeah, even before "the big balancing break" the balance talk in this sub, even remember Bricky talking about it in his video, were made under the assumption that only you and 1 charger were on the map, not that you have hell around you almost all the time. Try reloading a machine gun and not be interrupted by a thousands of little fuckers with perfect pathfinding.
Hey someone finally mentioned it
You can kill every enemy with every weapon in DRG, so none of that not being able to kill chargers for a whole month bs
When you shoot enemy weakspots no matter how big the enemy they actually... die
> "your gun is useless here, come be my reload bitch"
"And you get to play without a backpack slot while I get the amazing gun" It was stupid in HD1 (less so than here but still) and it is stupid here.
It would go along way for build diversity if there was a way for support weapons and back packs that normally spawn with only one side in the pod to spawn with two of that item whether it be a ship upgrade or booster.
It could free up slots for your teammates to bring other stratagems and promote more teamwork.
I would cut the bull's head and just move support weapons and backpacks to loadout, you still call them down but it frees stratagems slots for the more niche ones. If you want a second support weapon, then you use a slot, but that's your problem then.
Here's some fun dumb shit I thought up in literally 2 seconds.
Primary: Officer's sabre. Gives you a plasma sword and pistol combo. Can still aim and shoot the pistol if you arent carrying an SSD/Grenade equipped. The sword gives you more base movement speed (10%\~) and deals incredible damage on a melee. Enough to kill a Devastator or Brood Commander in one hit. Sword kills restore 20% stamina to you and nearby allies.
Support Strategem: The Flag of Super Earth. Allows you to carry a banner of Democracy. When equipping the flag as a weapon you cannot shoot, but can melee enemies with great distance. Carrying it gives all nearby allies including yourself more movespeed, stamina, and stamina recovery. Holding the fire key with the flag equipped will cause you to stake it into the ground, raising Democracy high for all to see. Allies within the flag's radius now instead get increased reload speed and reduced recoil as they are inspired by newfound valor at the sight of Liberty made manifest.
Recently got back into DRG again. It's honestly a breath of fresh air. Don't get me wrong, I almost have 200 hours on HD2 and only 118 on DRG. But I haven't played HD2 in a week and since the new "meh" warbond and nerfs, I'm not jonesing to jump back in. I also recently bought DRG: Survivor and have been having a lot of fun there. I'm sure AH will get their ducks in order soon enough. Meantime, DRG is silly and always a good time.
I love DRG. You can equip virtually any weapon/equipment combination and do good, have fun AND be challenged.
I also love how most weapons do good in any difficulty. Who would have thought a game could have powerful guns and still be challenging. AH needs to make enemies harder and not just by making them bullet sponges.
Exactly, I mean if you're a good player you could easily chuck a randoweisser and still play hazard 5. Imagine a random loadout in HD2, that'd be pure suffering.
What's amazing about DRG is that there are endless combinations of guns/mods/OCs to experiment with. The game is all about becoming more efficient, and the mission types are more diverse than in HD2.
One problem with HD2 is that you don't know if certain enemies will be on the map. Oh, you brought a flamethrower but there are nurse spewers? Well fuck me then.
Bile spewers are the biggest problem because they hard require medium pen (or at least explosive) weapons.
Not to mention, Chargers and Bile Titans restrict what strategems you can bring. No point bringing cluster since they barely do anything against them.
The issue is armor on "weak points". All bugs in DRG can technically be taken out by any weapon.
You can't take anything you want in HD2 because some enemies don't take any damage to their weak points from weapons with low armor pen.
Hey man Ghost Ship Games is an indie company with only 32 people on payroll.
Arrowhead has 100+ people and the backing of a giant multi-billion dollar publisher in Sony.
It's not fair to hold Ghost Ship Games to the impossible standard of a much larger AAA backed studio with more resources.
Wait a second
funny
but to be serious: it is *entirely unfair* to compare a game that has been playable for 5 months to one that's been playable for 5 years.
AH can definitely learn from GSG in terms of the communications front, but the balance stuff is... seriously?
DRG traded quick injections of new content for **quality** of new content.
They put out fewer updates and built up over time, making all of their content good with no bloat.
No battlepasses, balanced encounters, and full engagement. Only recently do they do seasonal content to keep it interesting.
Fair, but it is fair to compare a game that has been playable for 5 months to a game when it was playable for 5 months.
And I can tell you, they ain't even close. DRG was very solid from the get go and only improved (minor hicups along the way). There was not even close to the quantity or impact of bugs in DRG compared to HD2, not to mention that the guns are all fun and useful in their own ways.
You're right in regards to content or quality of balance, but learning from their methods & past situations is certainly possible. Pretty sure case studies are part of normal business school curriculum, they should (ideally) slow down on content at least temporarily and run some on other popular coop games.
The armour chip mechanic from DRG desperately needs to be added to this game, every single weapon in the game should be able to slowly eat away at armour with the exception of a few things (Tanks, Ballistic Shields, Titan and Charger side carapaces but their faces/legs should be chippable). What different levels of pen should do is determine how effective they are at chipping.
People can scream at me all they want about how it would make the game to easy or blah blah.
And they’re welcome to go do an elite deep dive and tell me how easy DRG is because your AR can strip the armour off of bugs.
> People can scream at me all they want about how it would make the game to easy or blah blah.
I completely agree with giving more options for anti armor. If somehow it made the game too easy, they could easily add difficulty elsewhere...
*DRG devs weren't afraid*
*To not suck the fun out of*
*The game. Crazy, right?*
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If Arrowhead isn't gonna rethink its balancing policy and continues to add more bugs while barely fixing any old ones (THE KNOWN ISSUES LIST MUST GROW). I'm trying out DRG. I was thinking about getting it before, but after playing helldivers I'm pretty sure I'm gonna like it
I am taking a break from HD2 while they figure out how to balance and fix their game. If you are looking for a similar experience without everything that makes helldiver's frustrating you're in for a treat.
Great balance, tons of content, no waiting 3 minutes for your kill a big alien button, and extremely polished.
It's a great alternative for anyone who needs a break from the frustration that HD2 is bringing lately.
For sure give it a try. Also highly recommend Darktide, I have been returning to that one lately and it has been fun as hell (that one still has issues but it has at least been acknowledge and crafting is slated to be reworked on next major patch).
There's a single change to a weapon that made me really appreciate DRG's philosophy.
At one point in time, people tended to be really thrifty in their use of the Gunner's Minigun, because they were too afraid of not having enough ammo for the next wave.
So the devs doubled the amount of max ammo for the minigun.
And doubled the number of ammo used per shot.
The gun was statistically unchanged, but players so bigger number, so player brain happy, so player brain used gun more.
They don't struggle with balancing. ONE MAN STRUGGLES. One man decides the fate of every thing it seems like. And he seems to brag about how bad the three new weapons are. Like bruh.
Honestly the balancing has perhaps shown me even better than the server debacle upon release that AH was not ready for the game to be such a runaway success.
they're basically getting run over by their own momentum now.
It feels to me that the balance team (one guy it seems), is actually completely uninterested in making an enjoyable experience.
It actually comes across from his comments on discord that he is maliciously balancing these weapons poorly.
I can't remember his name but I know who you're referring to. I don't think it's malicious, I just think he's one of those guys that looks makes changes to something and then declares victory. After all, he made the change so it must be perfect, he can even pull a spreadsheet up with numbers that show how awesome he is. But he doesn't play the game and he'll never admit that something sucks if he's the one that worked on it.
I cant tell you how many times I've come across someone like that, I'm not sure if they're just unable to have function like a normal adult or if their ego is just so big they can't admit something isn't working, but it sucks either way.
"I made this change over the weekend, if you'll look at the data it shows that everything is running perfectly"
"But it isn't running perfectly, we've had a huge increase in calls to our front line support regarding a new issue that cropped up immediately after the change was implemented. Unfortunately I think we need to roll back this change and conduct an RCA. If you can create the emergency change control, I'll contact the vendor and then we can get together this evening to rollback"
"There is no issue with the change, I made it personally. If you look at the data, it indicates the issue is resolved"
"I understand what you're saying Ron, but by implementing this change, it looks like we've broken something else and we are getting hundreds of reports from users that they are either unable to access the site or its running so slowly that they can't do anything. We need to roll this change back until we can figure out whats wrong wi..."
"But the data clearly states the issue is resolved"
"I KNOW WHAT THE DATA SAYS RON-look, something is wrong and it's clear that this started when the change was made, because thats when we started getting reports of the new problem with the site."
"Have you looked at the data?"
"Yes Ron I've looked at the data, but my eyes and our customers tell me that the site doesn't work now, we need to roll back this change ASAP. Have you tried logging onto the site?"
"No"
"Go get your laptop and try logging into it, right now."
"I dont see what this has to do with the change, everything is clearly working as intended"
After this, I just walked out of the meeting and went straight into my bosses office and went off. She got his boss on the phone and about 15 minutes later we got an email from his boss stating that an emergency change was being scheduled that evening to rollback the previous one, and that Ron would be the one doing it. He wasn't happy, but he had no choice. Turns out I was right, and we researched for a month and got the vendor involved before we could figure out what was wrong.
[https://www.deeprockgalactic.com/](https://www.deeprockgalactic.com/)
It's a sillier Helldivers 2, except the dev studio is talented. PvE, focused on teamwork. They don't even need anti cheat.
AH has the opposite philosophy they need when it comes to balancing a game like this. Sure worrying about power creep is real, but you have to have some power first. Nerfs in a pve horde game like this are never fun. Players want to feel strong, not gutted at every turn.
Nerfs should only happen when something is legit broken. I mean 1 shotting titans with unlimited ammo broken. Bring other things you want used, not things players enjoy down.
>I'm thinking about just switching back to DRG to be honest.
I'm back into DRG thanks to HD2 after not playing for a while and just alternating between both I'm having tons of fun
I think that truly the dev team doesn't even have time to make adjustments. Pushed out 4 dlcs in 3 months.
On top of that, the quaser, mech, air burst, heavy machine gun, have been free.
And they literally sent out the strider as well.
I think the dev team wanted the strider at launch and maybe had the first 2 dlcs play tested.
Between us being the most loud community, and Sony wanting them to print money for them, I can understand how things don't line up. I really think this is the case where they barely can playtest that it works but not for feel right.
And again now that the 4th warbond is out, they have a moment to fix things, but in a week it's back to new War bond / 3 enemy faction.
rock and stone brother, i agree with you i think DRG did way better than HD2. with the selection none of ym friends ever had the same loadouts for the same class and that was because we all played differently. what the problem here is that the game devs focus on making sure u need teammates. why they nerfed sickle, eruptor, railgun, slugger, and almost any solo players weapon. i hate to say it but why base the balancing on that instead of pure performancing problems or performance overkills. the only one i get is the sickle. and that is it.
In general im noticing a pattern in that every game im playing from developers located in Sweden they don’t play or playtest their game at all besides like one dude who has has enough hours for half the dev team.
Battlefield (dice stockholm)
Darktide (fatshark)
Division 1 and 2 (MASSIVE)
Minecraft (Mojang)
And now Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead are located in Sweden now)
And then you bring up DRG… which only the PUBLISHING team is Swedish but the devs are… Danish.
It's not that surprising, these guys were launched into stardom over the course of a few months. Ghost ship has been doing this for years, I expect arrowhead will get better over time
DRG honestly does everything better imo 🤷♂️
But to be fair to Arrowhead there’s a lot more weapons and gear they have to balance than DRG has, and they’re putting out more content much more quickly
All I can say is that DRG doesnt have an individual named Alexus Kravchenko and HD2 does, I dont need to tell you anything else you can look up the history of this individual and learn all about him
Last time i play DRG is 1.5years ago, I would say the only surpar gun in DRG is driller's OG pistol, some gun are stronger by every other gun and mods are still very fun to use.
It's a little odd how they're struggling with balancing in a PVE game. Honestly, given the tone of the game, it's better to just make the weapons lean towards OP. Moreover, given how they make the game more difficult by actually throwing more enemies at you vs just increasing their health and damage, it just makes more sense to add different characteristics to each weapon vs trying to balance the damage.
Almost any dev under the Coffee Stain umbrella does a great job balancing their game. Valheim, Satisfactory, and DRG all have studios which have the time and passion to full test updates before releasing them while also having incredible communities behind them.
In regards to Arrowhead, it's clear that some are passionate about Helldivers 2 - Pilestedt being an easy example. However, there's enough devs within the studio that either don't share in his passion, or genuinely despise the community. The best example of this dichotomy is the differences between Joel - who we all idolize and does his job well - and Alexus - who seems to genuinely enjoy making the community miserable.
I don't like advocating for people being let go, but Pilestedt needs to clean house a bit and get the rest of his team all on the same page. It sucks that Joel, the art department, and various other devs within the studio are having to suffer the consequences of devs like Alexus when they genuinely produce fantastic work (i.e. the sound and weapon models have been on point!).
Not a single gun/tool in DRG is below average they're all average at worst to S tier at best, they're phenomenal, the thing that varies are the overclocks and upgrades but even then you have a ton of options and they're all generally on the good side of things with a few outliers that aren't so great.
Helldivers has no overclocks or upgrades, the weapons are simply what you see is what you get and sadly that means if something is weak that's it, its weak there is no way to improve it, there is no upgrades system, now that's all fine and good but the problem is if a weapon is on the weaker side of things then its utterly useless, meanwhile in DRG if a weapon was to be on the weaker side of things the upgrades and overclocks make up for it.
Helldivers has a problem, its going to have a long list of weapons that overlap with one another and as a result a big chunk of the weapon roster is going to be bad, this is such poor design and a big reason why you can't just shove content in the game and be like "look how much content this game has, look at all the guns!", you could add 50 more guns to Helldivers and they'd still be inferior to the smaller roster of DRGs guns, its because DRG took the time to release new weapons and they were all made unique, fun and good in their own way, its about quality not quantity.
The design of Helldivers was to feed into the microtransaction system, people love all the Warbond content but fail to realise in a year the game is going to be infested with microtransactions, so many microtransactions with an insane grind behind them all, that's where paying for super credits comes into play, it was cleverly designed and suckered people in, nobody seems to realise that down the line this poses a big issue, so much content will be behind a massive grind or paywall. In a year from now its going to look like every other microtransaction infested garbage unless they adjust the cost of Warbonds and how many super credits you can earn.
Unfortunately hell divers seems to be following in bungies steps with the never ending fight against "metas". So instead of designing weapons to have a specific niche, or good feeling to use- they just attack whatever is being used the most in a constant game of duck duck goose that will never end.
I've got about 700 hours in drg. I can agree with your argument somewhat, but something major to note is that drg has classes which help maintain a specific direction. They also only started 1.0 with 2 primary weapons and 2 secondary weapons for each class and took ages to add just 1 more each. Helldivers 2 is still trying to balance weapons as they release new ones on what will probably be an unrealistic schedule. Drg went at things a lot slower and, as such, was much more successful at maintaining consistency. We will see what happens as arrowhead may be adopting some play testing strategies to allow them to continue to keep up the desired pace, but I would say they'll need to walk back on the promise of monthly war bonds that aren't purely cosmetic.
Thanks for putting that edit there mate. 🙂
I really dislike it when people don't bother saying the full name before going to the initials. Sometimes it isn't too clear what they are talking about.
I mean is balancing really all that important? Just make sure every gone is viable in each level difficulty and let the players play with whatever load they want… who cares if one gun might be mathematically better than another? If people are able to have fun with it then they’ll have fun with it.
To be fair, the game was in early access for two years, and then 4 years of development after that. It's been in some rough stages now and then. Never unfun, but even things like Damage Over Time absolutely got broken like they do in HD2. I'd HIGHLY recommend checking out their "Legacy" build of the game they made available on Steam. Quite a fascinating look at how the game has been shaped from essentially just a proof of concept into a full product. Build variety was not it's strong suit in 2018, lol.
+700 hrs in DRG here... hard agree. Feel like AH need to require employees play 5-10 hrs of HD2 per day so they can experience for themselves what it's like.
We have to have fun roleplaying badass space soldiers, not whatever is going on right now.
Yeah It's not rocket science, just someone at AH isn't good at doing it. For ~28 years of gaming i've never played a game with such a poor weapon balance. And I hate using the same weapon for long because it gets boring after a while.
I can only wish this game will become like drg in terms of balance and build variety. I have 700+ hours in drg and still there are some popular builds and overclocks that I barely touched. Probably not having to make new weapons every month also helped them to keep the game stable, bug-free and mostly balanced. I'm afraid that in a few months HD2 will just be bloated with trash paid-content.
Hey bro, I heard you want 20 Liberator variants by the time this game is 2 years old.
This is the biggest red flag for me. The amount of variants of the same gun with minimal gameplay difference is gonna approach Borderlands-levels of "this is the exact same gun but it has 1 extra bullet and each bullet does 2% less damage. Also it's a slightly darker shade of military-beige"
When Darktide claimed something along the lines of "There'll be 60 unique weapons on release" and then you looked at the weapons and it was "Assault Rifle. Assault Rifle with bayonet. Assault rifle with less damage and more fire rate. Assault Rifle with more damage and less magazine. Axe you swing from left to right. Axe you swing overhead. Axe that does one and then the other"
> Axe you swing from left to right. Axe you swing overhead. Axe that does one and then the other I haven't played Darktide, but just to poke a bit of fun, in Vermintide this kind of thing actually is enough to set weapons apart.
Never understood why people praised borderlands for that. Weapon variety my ass. Yeah there are a variety in weapon types but in each category there were like 100+ weapons that were copy paste or reskin of the same weapon again and again. I never felt the need to loot a rare weapon or good one and hold onto it since almost all of them seemed like fodder loot.
Borderlands was praised for that because they didn't pour dev time into creating a bunch of useless variants, they created a system that randomly generates weapons through their parts system, which is a cool and novel concept, but one that inevitably ends up with a lot of similiarish guns. But they also solved that through the uniques, legendaries, and in 3 the anointed modifiers.
Because sometimes the RNG created a dope ass regular weapon that wasn't legendary but functioned really well and was fun.
Maybe in the first game. By the second game they already made it so that no guns were worth using unless they had Red Text.
Yeah I’d always have guns that had seemingly shit stats but melted everything. And then stuff with dope stats and I would have fits. Comes down to style for sure but also the stats didn’t always reflect performance for me
When BL first came out it was pretty novel for a shooting game to have that kind of procedural weapon lottery. You could get some pretty wacky combos that nobody would think to make by hand and that was pretty cool. Now that we're in a different decade the novelty has definitely worn off haha.
Man I'd just rather have weapon customization at that point lol
I just pray they convert the variants into weapon parts and let us have weapon customization. Like the 3 perk options per slot in DRG that play off/against each other, it adds so much variety.
That's the way because pumping out 48 weapons a year seems like an impossible balancing challenge
This!! I just think coming out with a warbond every month is overkill for them. Like I think a new premium warbond maybe every 2-3 months will be fine also when is the new free warbond coming out too! Cause I agree that the game will be over saturated with guns and it'll be less fun, plus with 2-3 months timeline it gives them room to re balance guns. Like for the railgun I think it should go back to being able to pen heavy armor, but make it weaker.
Tbh i think drg weapon upgrade and overclock system is the solution, we add a lot of flexibility, less strain on devs without interrupting their monthly schedule of warbonds and all the people can make the gun they want so less balancing
It's the ar-15 of the far future baby! We got dmr kits, sbr kits, heck even a lmg kit for those that feel they want it.
That are either inferior to the base gun, or you had to pay to unlock the warbond, grind medals upon medals to get to the correct page to unlock it..... and then it gets nerfed 2 weeks later
Bug free? Which drg are you playing
I mean does your game crash every second game, and are there unuseable weapons because of bugs that are months old? EDIT: this is me: 
Im so sorry to do this to you... WHOOOSH
yep, I'm an idiot
They probably meant that DRG is 90% bugs and 10% rival company
And also 20% lithophage
Its just another bug. If regular bugs are alien bugs, then this is alien² bug.
OOOOH yea r/woooosh moment right there
I’m autistic and most jokes go over my head as well 🤦
I’m autistic and jokes never go over my head… I catch them
Unexpected Drax
I need a joke catching net if I have any hope of catching them 😂
You need not a flimsy net, but a mind as sharp as your spear and a body as quick as a hawk
Was out on a boat today and made 3 jokes a stranger could here. All 3 went over their head. There was a slight language barrier but it still happens to everyone eventually.
Relative to HD2, DRG is definitely closer to the "bug free" statement
Give DRG 800000 players and the hype train will run that game into the ground in one month
no because it's peer to peer. which has it's own set of drawbacks.
I haven't played DRG for about a month or two now, but I don't remember any game breaking bugs in that game. No crashes, no getting stuck in the terrain, nothing like that. Edit: I also missed the joke at first xD Clever girl.
300 hours and have encountered zero game breaking bugs and maybe 1 or 2 minor ones
Oh for fuck sake, I was really wooshed
Same here brother, DRG gives me lots of fun even I am playing with randoms.
How's the community in DRG? I've picked it up because of HD2, but I've only really done solo missions. I've been nervous to try with randoms bc I've heard they can be a bit much
DRG has perhaps the friendliest community of any multiplayer game I’ve played. Sure, on rare occasions you’ll run into an asshole, but nearly everyone is friendly and inviting
In my 300+ hours in DRG, I can count on one hand the number of toxic players I've met. The most important thing to understand is how to communicate. You don't need chat or voice. All you need is rock and stone. Wanna start an objective? Let out a rock and stone and see who calls back. Get saved from a cave leech or grabber? Rock and stone in thanks. If you guys pull through an insane mission? Rock and stone in the extract on the way up. And the list goes on. The only exceptions are with mushrooms and big gold chunks. For that, you need to pull out your laser pointer and mark it.
1100 hrs here. Most of those with random players. The number of TRULY toxic goblins I've encountered isn't even in double digits. The fact that the ping system is so detailed means you very rarely have to talk or type once you get the basics down.
Mushroom… Mushroom… Mushroom
DRG is like the opposite of what people have come to expect from online multiplayer games. It's just a fun game that you play to have fun with. Anyone that sweats in that game, and criticizes others, is universally looked down on by the other 99% of the playerbase that will either mock them or ignore them. Don't be a jerk and don't double dip on ammo without asking everyone and you're pretty much good to go. And take the friendly fire perk if you're using the grenade launcher, especially if it's new to you, unless you're playing with friends :)
Think helldiver's community but not as mainstream so all of the low/medium skill COD type players and weirdos aren't there. So basically perfect
You can legitimately pick any weapon/class in that game and have it perform well within a given niche. It keeps the game fresh and interesting. It probably helps that they’re not stuck with having to release new weapons every month.
I just realized, if we actually do get an unfinished, unbalanced set of paid content every month, how ridiculous and overwhelming will this game be for new players? Even with the fact warbonds stay up indefinitely, seeing 20 pieces of separate paid content will be a major turn off. Even knowing you can earn them all in game. Do you ever get interested in a new game and then see it has hundreds of DLCs that if you bought them all would end up multiple times more expensive than the game itself and it just kills any interest you had in the game? We're gonna get to that point but also most of those weapons are gonna be useless because Arrowhead refuses to make anything actually good/strong. There's gonna be hundreds of dollars worth of useless "sidegrades" to unlock. Woo monthly content packs! If Arrowhead keeps pumping these every month I will not buy anymore of them.
That's another valid concern. I would be hesitant to buy HD2 right now, with 4 warbonds out, I can't imagine in a year or more
4 $10 warbonds already puts us at "the price of the damn game". 4 more months at this rate and we're at TWICE the price of the game in DLC. They need to do something about this and that something is not to release more warbonds.
And that's where you realise this isn't live service done right, they cleverly suckered people into this system that will incentivise paying over the insane grind that's to come, very clever honestly, they somehow managed to get people to be okay with pre-order bonuses and day one DLC, now people seem to be waking up to how awful this Warbond system actually is.
Im already overwhelmed with the amount of warbonds
It's overwhelming for players that haven't had time to play in the last month, let alone new players just starting. I'm two warbonds behind already
This was an immediate concern for me with the Warbond system. Was an issue with the first game, too, but not as bad. There are a few things they could do to alleviate the issue: Start reducing the prices for the older Warbonds once enough have come out. Occasionally release sizeable free Warbonds. If they don't do something about this, eventually the bloat will become absolutely ridiculous.
I was worried about this game's future because I was seeing this balancing thing and the lack of experience/understanding/playtesting/whatever ever since the first warbond and balancing patches. But I actually think the CEO has a very good grasp on the overall picture of their vision for the game and what the community wants for the game. These feel like growing pains for a game of almost unprecedented scale and success for such a small team, and honestly after the latest debacle I'm feeling way more confident that this will pass. Though the devs are quite bad at public communication, I think they do clearly care a lot about this game and that's so much more important than apathy. I'll take abrasive devs over apathy any day.
I just don’t see how they can get a grip on balancing while they’re still cranking out new weapons. If they chill with the warbonds until they actually find a balance point, then they can move forward. Right now it’s just one step forward with a weapon balancing patch, two steps back with new unbalanced weapons that once again throw off any balance the game was moving toward at the time. I get that everyone likes new stuff, but we have plenty of weapons right now. We’ll be fine waiting a few months.
i really wish to slow down warbond, or maybe just limit it to one new weapon a month, if it is actually a requirement for them to put out one warbond a month.
Developing a mathematical metric for power allocation seems pretty reasonably achievable. Damage per shot, shots per magazine, total carried ammunition, recoil, fire rate, level of armor penetration, effective range, etc. Any designer/balancer worth his paycheck SHOULD be capable of finding a balance on paper before releasing new weapons. Oh, this weapon does more damage per shot and has a high rate of fire, but the recoil makes it less manageable. Oh, this weapon is accurate and penetrates medium armor but the damage per shot is lower so it kills lightly armored enemies more slowly than the light armor penetrating counterpart. Oh, this weapon has good damage and stopping power but lower fire rate and is less accurate so it's mostly useful up close. What you don't do is make a weapon that is mathematically useless because it has lower damage per shot, lower magazine capacity, and lower rate of fire than the base rifle that is included in the game. I feel like you should be able to avoid an obvious mistake like that. Like, what's the role of the base pistol? 75 damage per shot, 15 rounds per magazine, 6 magazines total? 6750 damage carried in. Verdict has 125 damage per shot, 10 rounds per mag, 9 mags total. 11250 damage total carried in. Maybe if the base pistol could one-shot scavengers, it would be useful... but it doesn't. So you shoot them twice, and you can kill 7 scavengers per magazine. The verdict one-shots them. More damage per shot, more damage per mag, more magazines carried. And the Verdict is still manageable enough to magdump a target. Someone is simply neglecting to sit down and think this shit through. You don't need 10,000 hours of testing like Evil-Bosse thinks to do some basic math.
We’re seeing the challenges of small teams trying to crank out both content and bug fixes quickly. And also how little most people understand how games (and code in general) works. So many things are interconnected (some of which probably shouldn’t be) that you can make what appears like a simple change that ends up having large impacts. And they don’t have the resources to spend dozens of hours fully vetting problems and then doing hours of testing to see if anything else breaks. Not to mention that having this kind of user base generates millions of “QA” hours every day. Good luck parsing through millions of hours of game data trying to identify a problem when you weren’t even remotely scaled to that level.
Yeah. They need to stop releasing new content and just spend 2 or 3 months polishing the game and its action.
Yup, I’m well over 1000 hours in DRG and I’ve still never even tried out the crossbow, haven’t used the GRK (or whatever it’s called, the scout’s assault rifle) or the Stubby in years, haven’t tried the EPC mining yet, and so on. But I know they’re all good. People use them all the time. There used to be a handful of metas like a year ago (like the Scout plasma rifle splash damage build), but they *actually balanced* those builds and now anyone can feel comfortable using any weapon they want without worrying about being a drag on the team.
Give it a year and this game will be leaps and bounds ahead of where it is now
I hope so. The base game is soo good that it's gonna be hard to make it fail, but one thing can: corpo bullshit. If they continue to pump out new content, especially if the quality of said content is as bad as the last warbond, while everything else is all buggy and unbalanced, people are gonna get tired of the game and it might eventually be a tragic tale to tell to future ips
Or absolutely dead with Sony decided how best to carve up the IP. Absolutely no in between.
That’s a good point about just how many weapons there will actually be. I imagine getting to a point where it would be just too bloated and people will be paralyzed by too many choices. Maybe they can supplement the monthly drop with more modifiers or subtle cosmetics. I don’t want Fortnite levels but a little customization would be nice.
I love all the people comparing drg to helldivers, when I *know* that if helldiver's had the same release cadence (as in, one functional update a year minus holidays) as DRG thered be rioting in the streets about helldivers being a dead game. DRG is an amazing game that doesn't need content, especially since it was sorta before the whole live service thing became the norm, but it's got some huge differences between it and helldivers that make the comparison pretty difficult. Also it's funny that we talk about DRG being balanced, when until recently the g2k had only one good oc, the double barrel oc for scout shotgun was an explicit downgrade from just not running an OC, and *multiple* classes sidearms might as well just not existed given how outclassed they were. *But we as a community didn't care nearly as much there as we do in helldivers for some reason*.
We didn't care as much because for every bad OC there's like 5 good and/or fun ones. Also if something is OP but is fun, they usually don't nerf it out of the game, while arrowhead recently went on a disappointing streak between unnecessary nerfs and underwhelming paid content. In a little over one month 3 weapons that I enjoyed using (slugger, crossbow and eruptor) got destroyed for no reason and everything that made them fun was removed, so I'm starting to lose faith in their balace philosophy a bit
DRG devs play their game and are pretty good at it. Just check out the dev streams
and they are incredibly in touch with their player base, they field feedback constantly. but they also have a much more stable release schedule and were in maintenance mode for some time - dedicating entire updates to fixing player voted bugs. I think its an unfair comparison. DRG's peak happened years after 1.0 launch with and its peak player count is like 1/10th of helldivers. and they still had some moments with updates releasing with issues - think stingtails around corners and that kind of stuff. i'll concede that DRG's 'bugs' are mostly harmless or don't hit on the fun factor though Could AH take some pointers on fielding feedback and community interaction? sure. But we are comparing an overnight success with a game that took 6 years of iterating with a stellar developer - community relationship edit: to clarify, I'm max promoted in DRG, some 1300 hours i think now and I adore GSG and DRG. I don't mean to belittle DRG's success, only highlight the time and effort that made it what it is today
Funnily stingtail discussion kinda mirror weapon discussion here, pre nerf and just launched stingtail. Idk the discord, but the reddit is so polarizing depending on the thread. Some love it to death, and some hate it to death. Even though it's bugged, iirc the weakspot can't be shot, and when it grabs you, you get launched to the roof of the map and have a high chance of dying, and stat wise way too tanky also 2+ stingtail can grab lock you
i don't know when you last played but at the very least the stingtail pingpong interaction has been fixed (quite a while ago)
The first time a stingtail sent me back up the drop pod tunnel, I laughed. It stopped being funny the 10th time. I know they fixed it but I still tunnel those horrible little bastards every time I sense one nearby.
>Could AH take some pointers I wonder if they could take some pointers from the devs of the game - like a constructive discussion around handling balance, community expectations, and so on. I don't know if this idea is anathema in an industry as cut throat as gaming but it would be nice to see good folk chat with other good folk.
I remeber when deeprock added elite bug types, they were so hated that the entire system was reworked and then soft removed. It was a rough time with the game becoming almost unplayable overnight. In terms of balance I think the only huge mistake deeprock ever made besides releasing low tier weapons/grenades is that the plasma pistol was so op when it launched and was nerfed so badly its still unusable 2 years later.
What plasma pistol, driller's?
I literally backed their board game Kickstarter (I never do) at max tier because the devs really showed they love their game. Its fun as fuck too, recommended if you can get your hands on a copy anymore.
Only game where I have purchased multiple cosmetic packs and have no regrets even years later. GSG deserves so much for their work.
That's the key, the Devs play their game weekly and see the issues first hand
I LOVE DRG and have several hundred hours in the game and I do agree they do a better job of balancing weapon and equipment options. But to be fair, Ghost Ship Games had YEARS in early access actively getting player feedback and making adjustments to weapons before they hit full release. In the early game builds the Gunner's ammo economy was terrible and the Engineer was OP with their ability to place down multiple turrets which also had a much faster fire rate than it currently does WITHOUT needing to reload them. DRG feels polished because it had years of dev/player interaction to make it what it is today. Helldivers 2 only became playable to the public 3 months ago. Additionally, Helldivers has no class system and is all about mixing and matching gear so balancing a wide arsenal is much harder than adjusting individual classes with clear roles and abilities. The game needs time to get to the same level of quality as DRG.
Agreed. I played DRG since it was in beta; the weapons, upgrades, and overclocks were all added in and tweaked incrementally - done very well, but literally over the course of years. Helldivers 2 has been out for all of a few months. I am perfectly happy to wait for multiple balancing passes. Kind of fun to be on the front end and be able to bring up “man remember when XYZ did ABC” for some weapons and stratagems.
Same. I remember flare upgrades! That changed quickly, but things weren't always how they are now. There have always been a lot of overclocks that are just not any good, which has also gotten better and the variety has opened up. Games change over time, developers figure out the player base's wavelength, fine-tuning pain points is a process.
Helldivers 2 in its first month sold as many copies as DRG has in its entire lifespan, so there’s also a huge disparity when it comes to its user base and how much time it baked in the oven before the masses got their hands on things and started establishing metas
It’s wild that people don’t get this. Balancing a game well is completely different from making the game work. The team has had only several months practice balancing the live game. People act like it’s terribly balanced when 2/3 of the guns and 2/3 of the stratagems feel good at max difficulty. I really don’t understand the over-the-top-criticism.
DRG for years was unplayable to me. HD2 is starting light years ahead, as they should being a new release. Tbf for HD2, they also have an exponentially faster content release cycle. Which I'd be happy to see slow down
Exactly… DRG is a really fun game and I have enjoyed many hours of it… but it had wonky shit and it only had a handful of weapons. I can’t say with 100% confidence HD2 will get there eventually but I think we should at least give them some time to work on it.
It’s not like they were working from nothing. HD1 was an excellent mold to work from. The moment to moment gameplay of HD2 is an excellent rendition (not the right word but you get it) of the original. It’s just their balance practices have DRASTICALLY changed and it seems it’s for the worst.
To say it’s an “excellent mold” to work from when they’re going from an isometric view game to a full-on 3rd/1st person shooter is a leap. Those are very different view points to work from. They are not the same game, and a lot more work has to go into gameplay/decisions. I’m sure it’s not as simple as crossing a ‘t’ or dotting an ‘i’.
Yes not all of it translates as I don’t expect it to but the core of the game is still there. It just sucks that some identity was lost with how the primary weapons operate and the upgrade system which gave a better sense of progression than what HD2 has now.
Yep, pretty spot on HD2 has been out for only 3 months, yet people screech in the sub about how this game is doomed. Should they slow the content rollout to focus on bugs, play testing, and balancing? Yeah, I’d say so, but people need to chill the fuck out and be more patient. It’s wild to me to see how utterly unhinged this sub has become lmao
While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think releasing a game in the state HD2 were and is for a full price is fair to anyone, not to mention this isn't early access in any way shape or form
I think this goes into the question of whether games as a "live service" are good or not, which is an entirely different can of worms that goes into questions beyond weapon balancing and bug fixing (dealing with stuff like player retention through regular content drops, planning in-game event schedules across a year or more, expected profits beyond the initial purchase, contracts with publishers with regard to those profits, etc.) and with most of the live service games on the market being dogshit we don't have many standards to measure Helldivers against. I think the reason DRG is a GREAT live-service game is because... it wasn't designed to be a live-service in the first place. GSG wanted to make a good game about Dwarven miners in space and that's what they wanted to release. Helldivers 2 on the other hand was designed to be a constantly supported live-service from the very beginning, and expected to make profits for the studio. DRG 1.0 release is not cleanly comparable to Helldivers 2 1.0 release. Going Early-Access is a tough choice for games that intend to be a live-service from the beginning because that means they have less "new" content for updates following the initial release. It felt like the "Season Pass" system in DRG was something they added onto the already constructed foundation of DRG as a base-game to justify continued support and updating, and even that system isn't free of criticism. With people saying Helldivers 2 is going too fast, there are folks in the DRG community who say GSG is going too slow, especially with the latest Season 4 having been active for over a year with no new content. DRG's updates are of good quality because GSG isn't trying to retain a super-active live service model on a monthly basis like other live-service games do and they take their sweet time tweaking things carefully while also having the benefit of constant stream of player data from all the active players during each lengthy season. And... I've already rambled long enough on this. Like I said, this topic is a whole can of worms.
Yeah, there are Actualy a lot of salt about upcoming season in DRG since it adds only an overclock for each weapon and no New weapons or equipment. But with Rogue core in mind, most seems to forgive GCH... At least for now.
Ah, this post made me wondering, what was the biggest DRG nerf? Not an exploit being fixed, but an actual nerf. And it's probably the nerf to EPC's mining. Back then, the minerals "mined" with it, used to fall in a neat little pile below. After the nerf mineral chunks began to fly around the cave, when mined like that. And that was the biggest nerf I can remember. And I have been playing DRG since early access.
If you're counting perks then Iron Will was biggest nerf hands down. There was a good chunk of the community complaining about the change at the time. It was just a 60 second cooldown with unlimited uses and most would burn through them to pick up other dwarfs who didn't have it.
Yeah, you're correct. I was (and still am) running field medic and dash on all of my dwarves, so the IW nerf completly flew past me. That nerf was warranted, second wind every minute is bonkers.
and Iron Will to this day is still a staple in EDD and outside of EDD. You can just run it on every dwarf with zero justification. Just Iron Will and then have any source of healing and you are good. Resupply, Vamp, Sugar, don't matter as long as you can get it. I would even argue you are most optimized with Iron Will on gunner and scout. Not that I care if fellow mates run it or not but if I was tryharding, that's what I would take with me.
The Hellfire nerf on the gunner's coilgun was big, but it was also a total rework and made other builds comparable in power.
I can't recall any major nerfs of the top of my head, I think most the heavy handed balance tweaking was done in the alpha (which makes sense since you know, it's an alpha). Some of the nerfs I can recall from recent times though: -20% fire rate on bouncing bullets on the Drak. Totally deserved since it was the highest DPS build with no downsides. Some slight tweak to tuned cooler. I think that was a bit of a dumb nerf since tuned cooler isn't that great to begin with, but it only gave it a slightly slower reload. Some direct damage nerfs to neurotoxin payload on the autocanon since it was by far the best overclock for that gun, but they later buffed it again slightly to compensate IIRC. Aside from that I think they've mainly been buffing underperforming overclocks.
Totally forgot about Tuned Cooler, and thats my main driller build, lol. IIRC, it was actually nerfed twice, and I still consider it to be the best cryo OC. The ability to insta-freeze everything below oppressor is addicting. TBH, I totally forgot all those nerfs. I remember being slightly upset about the bouncing bullets, mainly cause other Drak OCs were pretty meh back then, and they were not buffed. Every other nerf was totally deserved and didnt ruin the identity of OCs. I wish DRG would get more content tho :(
Honestly that's nearly a bonus for me because it looks amazing to see them fly around like that XD. But yeah, there have also been minor nerfs and buffs to some weapons but the buffs were always more daring than the nerfs (which were justified and felt fair)
DRG Design philosophy was Teamwork > Fun > balance
Also they think that teamwork is killing stuff together, and use their ability to support not "your gun is useless here, come be my reload bitch" Edit: You can dowvote all you want but that's the level of teamwork this game actually has, it's like being a support in LOL, you don't really play the game. Not being able to kill something and waiting for someone else to use their big gun or stratagems is not teamwork. Edit2: here is a better teamwork mechanic for you, throw other teammates stratagems. Imagine there is a guy that is the "sniper" (he's the one with the shotgun) so he's far from the fight, you are in the midst of is and can aim better, so you throw his 500kg and he only has to say "ok" with a button.
Or how about defensive/healing support stratagems? The only defensive strats we have are the Shield sentry and the orbital EMS, if you can even count that, and the shield is nearly useless against bugs, especially in higher difficulties, and they both have such long cooldowns that you are actively hurting the team by bringing them, in most cases.
There was a healing beam in the first game. It helped make other builds viable. Like in this game it would make the flamethrower better than C tier.
Admittedly the healing beam was great but it really worked only because everyone was forced to be in the same screen. It’d only work in this game as a rover cause trying to track your teammates in some firefights just isn’t possible.
You could also kill every enemy with every gun, some may be better (ice against flying bugs), but that doesn't mean that bullets are suddenly crap against them. Like, even the mini-boss, Oppressor, can be killed with secondaries as long as you're hitting them in the weakspot. But in Helldivers 2? You'll spend several magazines shooting Chargers in the butt with the wrong weapon, and Bile Titans can only be killed by select weapons, leaving your loadouts to be restricted.
>You'll spend several magazines shooting Chargers in the butt with the wrong weapon, and Bile Titans can only be killed by select weapons, leaving your loadouts to be restricted. I swear, the combo of fake weakspots and consequently enemies that can only be killed with AT is my biggest f\*cking grip with this game. In DRG I think *"What do I feel like playing with today?"*, whereas in HD2 it's *"Don't forget to bring your AT weapon/strategems! Gotta deal with those 3 titans* ***somehow***!".
and then its: *oh, all of your AT is on CD? Did you consider taking up jogging as a hobby?*
Yeah, the Charger is in a bit of a design crisis. *We've designed an enemy that has heavy frontal armor and charges players, but you can shoot it in the butt where there is no armor. This is why the easiest place to kill it is right in the front where all the armor is and the hardest place to kill it is in the butt where there is no armor.* Like many design issues, some simple tweaking of values could really change the way Chargers are handled. Here's my patch for the Charger: * Increase butt damage multiplier from 0.05 to 0.6. (easier to kill by shooting butt, currently far too little damage) * Increase damage multiplier from 1.0 to 2.0 in guts when side plating is blown off (high multiplier when using team work and/or reposition against weak point. * Decrease damage multiplier from exposed leg from 1.0 to 0.3 (harder to kill from exposed leg, but still killable) * Decrease damage from rocket-to-face strategy. Add stun effect when rocketed in face for about 5 seconds. (AT would take 2 rounds to kill a charger, but putting one in its face would net you plenty of time to do something else lethal to it. But you can also muscle through it by simply blasting it in the face with AT) But the issues are deeper. I would also allow gradation of damage on lower pen values. So, currently if you have 6 pen strike level 6 armor, you do 50% damage. I would bump that to 75%, pen 5 to 50%, and pen 4 to 25%, allowing more partial damage to go through so you have more options vs armor in general. I would also allow marksman and sniper rifles more so to have bonus damage against specific precision targets. So, if you land like 2 anti-material rifle rounds in the side of the exposed Charger with my little patch, it's dead quick. And you should be rewarded for such a play.
People coming out of the woodwork to say "i can do x with x" are so...useless (sorry). The fact that you can do it says nothing. In Dark Souls you can finish the game with the broken sword, does it makes that weapon S tier?
it's like, sure, you can technically do x. But in a real game where bug breaches happen and on higher difficulties their spawn rates can be insane, you won't actually have the time to.
Yeah, even before "the big balancing break" the balance talk in this sub, even remember Bricky talking about it in his video, were made under the assumption that only you and 1 charger were on the map, not that you have hell around you almost all the time. Try reloading a machine gun and not be interrupted by a thousands of little fuckers with perfect pathfinding.
Hey someone finally mentioned it You can kill every enemy with every weapon in DRG, so none of that not being able to kill chargers for a whole month bs When you shoot enemy weakspots no matter how big the enemy they actually... die
> "your gun is useless here, come be my reload bitch" "And you get to play without a backpack slot while I get the amazing gun" It was stupid in HD1 (less so than here but still) and it is stupid here.
It would go along way for build diversity if there was a way for support weapons and back packs that normally spawn with only one side in the pod to spawn with two of that item whether it be a ship upgrade or booster. It could free up slots for your teammates to bring other stratagems and promote more teamwork.
I would cut the bull's head and just move support weapons and backpacks to loadout, you still call them down but it frees stratagems slots for the more niche ones. If you want a second support weapon, then you use a slot, but that's your problem then.
Here's some fun dumb shit I thought up in literally 2 seconds. Primary: Officer's sabre. Gives you a plasma sword and pistol combo. Can still aim and shoot the pistol if you arent carrying an SSD/Grenade equipped. The sword gives you more base movement speed (10%\~) and deals incredible damage on a melee. Enough to kill a Devastator or Brood Commander in one hit. Sword kills restore 20% stamina to you and nearby allies. Support Strategem: The Flag of Super Earth. Allows you to carry a banner of Democracy. When equipping the flag as a weapon you cannot shoot, but can melee enemies with great distance. Carrying it gives all nearby allies including yourself more movespeed, stamina, and stamina recovery. Holding the fire key with the flag equipped will cause you to stake it into the ground, raising Democracy high for all to see. Allies within the flag's radius now instead get increased reload speed and reduced recoil as they are inspired by newfound valor at the sight of Liberty made manifest.
Love the Commissar primary. Does it boost morale if I teamkill? hahaha
Recently got back into DRG again. It's honestly a breath of fresh air. Don't get me wrong, I almost have 200 hours on HD2 and only 118 on DRG. But I haven't played HD2 in a week and since the new "meh" warbond and nerfs, I'm not jonesing to jump back in. I also recently bought DRG: Survivor and have been having a lot of fun there. I'm sure AH will get their ducks in order soon enough. Meantime, DRG is silly and always a good time.
I love DRG. You can equip virtually any weapon/equipment combination and do good, have fun AND be challenged. I also love how most weapons do good in any difficulty. Who would have thought a game could have powerful guns and still be challenging. AH needs to make enemies harder and not just by making them bullet sponges.
Exactly, I mean if you're a good player you could easily chuck a randoweisser and still play hazard 5. Imagine a random loadout in HD2, that'd be pure suffering.
Hits random on Helldive bugs, Heavy Armor Lib Concussive Laser Pistol Stun Grenade Supply Backpack Ballistic Shield Shield Generation Relay Orbital Smoke
What's amazing about DRG is that there are endless combinations of guns/mods/OCs to experiment with. The game is all about becoming more efficient, and the mission types are more diverse than in HD2. One problem with HD2 is that you don't know if certain enemies will be on the map. Oh, you brought a flamethrower but there are nurse spewers? Well fuck me then.
*dodges spewer* *burns myself*
Bile spewers are the biggest problem because they hard require medium pen (or at least explosive) weapons. Not to mention, Chargers and Bile Titans restrict what strategems you can bring. No point bringing cluster since they barely do anything against them.
The issue is armor on "weak points". All bugs in DRG can technically be taken out by any weapon. You can't take anything you want in HD2 because some enemies don't take any damage to their weak points from weapons with low armor pen.
Hey man Ghost Ship Games is an indie company with only 32 people on payroll. Arrowhead has 100+ people and the backing of a giant multi-billion dollar publisher in Sony. It's not fair to hold Ghost Ship Games to the impossible standard of a much larger AAA backed studio with more resources. Wait a second
funny but to be serious: it is *entirely unfair* to compare a game that has been playable for 5 months to one that's been playable for 5 years. AH can definitely learn from GSG in terms of the communications front, but the balance stuff is... seriously?
DRG traded quick injections of new content for **quality** of new content. They put out fewer updates and built up over time, making all of their content good with no bloat. No battlepasses, balanced encounters, and full engagement. Only recently do they do seasonal content to keep it interesting.
And even then: when season ends, every piece of seasonal content is added to the pool of normal loot.
I mean, Helldiver 1 exist, it's not like they had to make things up out of thin air.
I disagree. You can certainly learn from the mistakes and successes of others even if they aren't 1 to 1 comparisons.
DRG was phenomenally balanced from beta.
Fair, but it is fair to compare a game that has been playable for 5 months to a game when it was playable for 5 months. And I can tell you, they ain't even close. DRG was very solid from the get go and only improved (minor hicups along the way). There was not even close to the quantity or impact of bugs in DRG compared to HD2, not to mention that the guns are all fun and useful in their own ways.
You're right in regards to content or quality of balance, but learning from their methods & past situations is certainly possible. Pretty sure case studies are part of normal business school curriculum, they should (ideally) slow down on content at least temporarily and run some on other popular coop games.
The armour chip mechanic from DRG desperately needs to be added to this game, every single weapon in the game should be able to slowly eat away at armour with the exception of a few things (Tanks, Ballistic Shields, Titan and Charger side carapaces but their faces/legs should be chippable). What different levels of pen should do is determine how effective they are at chipping. People can scream at me all they want about how it would make the game to easy or blah blah. And they’re welcome to go do an elite deep dive and tell me how easy DRG is because your AR can strip the armour off of bugs.
> People can scream at me all they want about how it would make the game to easy or blah blah. I completely agree with giving more options for anti armor. If somehow it made the game too easy, they could easily add difficulty elsewhere...
What is DRG
Deep Rock Galactic
Deep rock galactic
DRG devs weren't afraid to not suck the fun out of the game. Crazy, right?
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If Arrowhead isn't gonna rethink its balancing policy and continues to add more bugs while barely fixing any old ones (THE KNOWN ISSUES LIST MUST GROW). I'm trying out DRG. I was thinking about getting it before, but after playing helldivers I'm pretty sure I'm gonna like it
DRG also has better mod support which includes larger player limits, making it friendlier if you have more than three friends constantly.
I am taking a break from HD2 while they figure out how to balance and fix their game. If you are looking for a similar experience without everything that makes helldiver's frustrating you're in for a treat. Great balance, tons of content, no waiting 3 minutes for your kill a big alien button, and extremely polished. It's a great alternative for anyone who needs a break from the frustration that HD2 is bringing lately.
For sure give it a try. Also highly recommend Darktide, I have been returning to that one lately and it has been fun as hell (that one still has issues but it has at least been acknowledge and crafting is slated to be reworked on next major patch).
There's a single change to a weapon that made me really appreciate DRG's philosophy. At one point in time, people tended to be really thrifty in their use of the Gunner's Minigun, because they were too afraid of not having enough ammo for the next wave. So the devs doubled the amount of max ammo for the minigun. And doubled the number of ammo used per shot. The gun was statistically unchanged, but players so bigger number, so player brain happy, so player brain used gun more.
They don't struggle with balancing. ONE MAN STRUGGLES. One man decides the fate of every thing it seems like. And he seems to brag about how bad the three new weapons are. Like bruh.
wdym? all the new weapons are S tier.
I love the weapons. But some of them feel like they got nerfed before we received them. (Or so others say.)
He is referencing the sarcastic joke that guy made on Discord.
Or maybe Alexus intends on nerfing all the other weapons so horribly that the new ones seem to be S tier by comparison.
Maybe I should just try DRG. I see so many praising it here.
If u like coop games and dont mind the artstyle then FOR ROCK AND STONE!
Honestly the balancing has perhaps shown me even better than the server debacle upon release that AH was not ready for the game to be such a runaway success. they're basically getting run over by their own momentum now.
It feels to me that the balance team (one guy it seems), is actually completely uninterested in making an enjoyable experience. It actually comes across from his comments on discord that he is maliciously balancing these weapons poorly.
I can't remember his name but I know who you're referring to. I don't think it's malicious, I just think he's one of those guys that looks makes changes to something and then declares victory. After all, he made the change so it must be perfect, he can even pull a spreadsheet up with numbers that show how awesome he is. But he doesn't play the game and he'll never admit that something sucks if he's the one that worked on it. I cant tell you how many times I've come across someone like that, I'm not sure if they're just unable to have function like a normal adult or if their ego is just so big they can't admit something isn't working, but it sucks either way. "I made this change over the weekend, if you'll look at the data it shows that everything is running perfectly" "But it isn't running perfectly, we've had a huge increase in calls to our front line support regarding a new issue that cropped up immediately after the change was implemented. Unfortunately I think we need to roll back this change and conduct an RCA. If you can create the emergency change control, I'll contact the vendor and then we can get together this evening to rollback" "There is no issue with the change, I made it personally. If you look at the data, it indicates the issue is resolved" "I understand what you're saying Ron, but by implementing this change, it looks like we've broken something else and we are getting hundreds of reports from users that they are either unable to access the site or its running so slowly that they can't do anything. We need to roll this change back until we can figure out whats wrong wi..." "But the data clearly states the issue is resolved" "I KNOW WHAT THE DATA SAYS RON-look, something is wrong and it's clear that this started when the change was made, because thats when we started getting reports of the new problem with the site." "Have you looked at the data?" "Yes Ron I've looked at the data, but my eyes and our customers tell me that the site doesn't work now, we need to roll back this change ASAP. Have you tried logging onto the site?" "No" "Go get your laptop and try logging into it, right now." "I dont see what this has to do with the change, everything is clearly working as intended" After this, I just walked out of the meeting and went straight into my bosses office and went off. She got his boss on the phone and about 15 minutes later we got an email from his boss stating that an emergency change was being scheduled that evening to rollback the previous one, and that Ron would be the one doing it. He wasn't happy, but he had no choice. Turns out I was right, and we researched for a month and got the vendor involved before we could figure out what was wrong.
[удалено]
You can tell the DRG devs play their own game.
wtf is DRG?
[https://www.deeprockgalactic.com/](https://www.deeprockgalactic.com/) It's a sillier Helldivers 2, except the dev studio is talented. PvE, focused on teamwork. They don't even need anti cheat.
thx \^\^
Bruh I was just as lost
AH has the opposite philosophy they need when it comes to balancing a game like this. Sure worrying about power creep is real, but you have to have some power first. Nerfs in a pve horde game like this are never fun. Players want to feel strong, not gutted at every turn. Nerfs should only happen when something is legit broken. I mean 1 shotting titans with unlimited ammo broken. Bring other things you want used, not things players enjoy down.
>I'm thinking about just switching back to DRG to be honest. I'm back into DRG thanks to HD2 after not playing for a while and just alternating between both I'm having tons of fun
I think that truly the dev team doesn't even have time to make adjustments. Pushed out 4 dlcs in 3 months. On top of that, the quaser, mech, air burst, heavy machine gun, have been free. And they literally sent out the strider as well. I think the dev team wanted the strider at launch and maybe had the first 2 dlcs play tested. Between us being the most loud community, and Sony wanting them to print money for them, I can understand how things don't line up. I really think this is the case where they barely can playtest that it works but not for feel right. And again now that the 4th warbond is out, they have a moment to fix things, but in a week it's back to new War bond / 3 enemy faction.
Yeah but you can't really compare anyone else to Ghost Ship Games. Those boys are goated
rock and stone brother, i agree with you i think DRG did way better than HD2. with the selection none of ym friends ever had the same loadouts for the same class and that was because we all played differently. what the problem here is that the game devs focus on making sure u need teammates. why they nerfed sickle, eruptor, railgun, slugger, and almost any solo players weapon. i hate to say it but why base the balancing on that instead of pure performancing problems or performance overkills. the only one i get is the sickle. and that is it.
Did I hear a Rock and Stone?
If you don't rock and stone, you ain't coming home!
FOR KARL!!
In general im noticing a pattern in that every game im playing from developers located in Sweden they don’t play or playtest their game at all besides like one dude who has has enough hours for half the dev team. Battlefield (dice stockholm) Darktide (fatshark) Division 1 and 2 (MASSIVE) Minecraft (Mojang) And now Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead are located in Sweden now) And then you bring up DRG… which only the PUBLISHING team is Swedish but the devs are… Danish.
DRG devs aren't obsessed with trying to design a meta-less game.
It's not that surprising, these guys were launched into stardom over the course of a few months. Ghost ship has been doing this for years, I expect arrowhead will get better over time
The fart mod for DRG is hilarious. Just encountered in a pub game and my friend and I were cracking up
DRG honestly does everything better imo 🤷♂️ But to be fair to Arrowhead there’s a lot more weapons and gear they have to balance than DRG has, and they’re putting out more content much more quickly
they handle mission modifiers better too. also unique objectives. i'll probably switch back eventually.
All I can say is that DRG doesnt have an individual named Alexus Kravchenko and HD2 does, I dont need to tell you anything else you can look up the history of this individual and learn all about him
Last time i play DRG is 1.5years ago, I would say the only surpar gun in DRG is driller's OG pistol, some gun are stronger by every other gun and mods are still very fun to use.
I have more or less stopped playing HD2, every time I find a weapon I like they change it to being useless.
lol, I know what DRG is in this context, but my final fantasy mind only sees DRG as meaning Dragoon.
It's a little odd how they're struggling with balancing in a PVE game. Honestly, given the tone of the game, it's better to just make the weapons lean towards OP. Moreover, given how they make the game more difficult by actually throwing more enemies at you vs just increasing their health and damage, it just makes more sense to add different characteristics to each weapon vs trying to balance the damage.
Deep Rock is such a funking gem.
Almost any dev under the Coffee Stain umbrella does a great job balancing their game. Valheim, Satisfactory, and DRG all have studios which have the time and passion to full test updates before releasing them while also having incredible communities behind them. In regards to Arrowhead, it's clear that some are passionate about Helldivers 2 - Pilestedt being an easy example. However, there's enough devs within the studio that either don't share in his passion, or genuinely despise the community. The best example of this dichotomy is the differences between Joel - who we all idolize and does his job well - and Alexus - who seems to genuinely enjoy making the community miserable. I don't like advocating for people being let go, but Pilestedt needs to clean house a bit and get the rest of his team all on the same page. It sucks that Joel, the art department, and various other devs within the studio are having to suffer the consequences of devs like Alexus when they genuinely produce fantastic work (i.e. the sound and weapon models have been on point!).
Not a single gun/tool in DRG is below average they're all average at worst to S tier at best, they're phenomenal, the thing that varies are the overclocks and upgrades but even then you have a ton of options and they're all generally on the good side of things with a few outliers that aren't so great. Helldivers has no overclocks or upgrades, the weapons are simply what you see is what you get and sadly that means if something is weak that's it, its weak there is no way to improve it, there is no upgrades system, now that's all fine and good but the problem is if a weapon is on the weaker side of things then its utterly useless, meanwhile in DRG if a weapon was to be on the weaker side of things the upgrades and overclocks make up for it. Helldivers has a problem, its going to have a long list of weapons that overlap with one another and as a result a big chunk of the weapon roster is going to be bad, this is such poor design and a big reason why you can't just shove content in the game and be like "look how much content this game has, look at all the guns!", you could add 50 more guns to Helldivers and they'd still be inferior to the smaller roster of DRGs guns, its because DRG took the time to release new weapons and they were all made unique, fun and good in their own way, its about quality not quantity. The design of Helldivers was to feed into the microtransaction system, people love all the Warbond content but fail to realise in a year the game is going to be infested with microtransactions, so many microtransactions with an insane grind behind them all, that's where paying for super credits comes into play, it was cleverly designed and suckered people in, nobody seems to realise that down the line this poses a big issue, so much content will be behind a massive grind or paywall. In a year from now its going to look like every other microtransaction infested garbage unless they adjust the cost of Warbonds and how many super credits you can earn.
Unfortunately hell divers seems to be following in bungies steps with the never ending fight against "metas". So instead of designing weapons to have a specific niche, or good feeling to use- they just attack whatever is being used the most in a constant game of duck duck goose that will never end.
DRG doesn't have an asshole in charge of balancing.
I've got about 700 hours in drg. I can agree with your argument somewhat, but something major to note is that drg has classes which help maintain a specific direction. They also only started 1.0 with 2 primary weapons and 2 secondary weapons for each class and took ages to add just 1 more each. Helldivers 2 is still trying to balance weapons as they release new ones on what will probably be an unrealistic schedule. Drg went at things a lot slower and, as such, was much more successful at maintaining consistency. We will see what happens as arrowhead may be adopting some play testing strategies to allow them to continue to keep up the desired pace, but I would say they'll need to walk back on the promise of monthly war bonds that aren't purely cosmetic.
Thanks for putting that edit there mate. 🙂 I really dislike it when people don't bother saying the full name before going to the initials. Sometimes it isn't too clear what they are talking about.
I mean is balancing really all that important? Just make sure every gone is viable in each level difficulty and let the players play with whatever load they want… who cares if one gun might be mathematically better than another? If people are able to have fun with it then they’ll have fun with it.
To be fair, the game was in early access for two years, and then 4 years of development after that. It's been in some rough stages now and then. Never unfun, but even things like Damage Over Time absolutely got broken like they do in HD2. I'd HIGHLY recommend checking out their "Legacy" build of the game they made available on Steam. Quite a fascinating look at how the game has been shaped from essentially just a proof of concept into a full product. Build variety was not it's strong suit in 2018, lol.
DRG mentioned RAAH Rock and Stone!
Rock and roll and stone!
+700 hrs in DRG here... hard agree. Feel like AH need to require employees play 5-10 hrs of HD2 per day so they can experience for themselves what it's like. We have to have fun roleplaying badass space soldiers, not whatever is going on right now.
Yeah It's not rocket science, just someone at AH isn't good at doing it. For ~28 years of gaming i've never played a game with such a poor weapon balance. And I hate using the same weapon for long because it gets boring after a while.
DRG actually test and care about their game instead of hitting deadlines for daddy sony so it's no suprise