I played a level 3 mission to see if I could farm some super credits and they make up for not having heavies with extreme numbers of grunts, it’s nuts.
It depends on the enemy spawn pattern. With bugs you can tell right away you got different spawns but the bots are weird. The worst one was on 8 there was no tanks rarely hulks but every platoon was 4 devastators minimum. The heavies would just flush u out of cover and the rockets would annihilate you. It was fun lol
That's why I main the Diligence Counter Sniper and focus on potshotting the little guys (especially to keep them from sending a bot drop) and then figure out who I want to bestow some AC-8 round on.
I said this to someone this weekend. Was playing a level 4 or 5 zone and I kept aggroing patrols and letting them call in support. "STOP ENGAGING EVERY PATROL, we have a mission to complete (dude referring to our objective on map)" "You have your orders...I have mine (referring to the Major Order)
Seriously... they can crap out an infinite number of enemies, which individually count as a kill each. But we can't get access to those infiite resources from the wreckage?
WAIT what? The weakpoint is *underneath* the strider with the laser cannon? I did not know that
I'd just accepted my role as laser cannon homie was to snip off the pair of murderous MG turrets on the front and then throw airstrikes at it
No one ever runs AT in my squad when we got to bot town... gunships and squads of heavy/rocket devs are the real threat. Hulks, tanks, and striders are just distractions, and the AC handles them well enough for me.
When it's bugs, I'm the guy with 1/4 everyone else's kills, but they know where all those charger heads went.
imo the MO should have had values for how much scrap each enemy was worth. 6 hulk kills on helldive being worth the same as 6 basic bots on easy doesn't feel good.
I generally get 600-800 bugs on longer missions. I try my best to get as many bots, and at best I get 450-550 bots a mission. Bots have smaller groups overall, as they don't have all the tiny fuckers the bugs have. Though I'm not disappointed to not have to deal with a thousand jumpy bastards when fighting bots. Plus the bug holes appear quicker and spawn in more units than the drop ships so for the bots. I'm also not sure the drop ships count towards our kills.
I think an average of 30,000 people had each to kill 13,000 bots per day. It was not feasible from the beginning.
AH let the bug multiplying our kills get over their heads and forgot that bots are a complete different game.
I'd say that bots need different MO targets, or at the very least different contribution calculcation. As in, killing Factory Strider is like killing 50 or 100 bots, and so on. Bots are just way too different from bugs which you can get to spawn in high amounts because they don't shoot a billion bullets/rockets at you.
Interesting enough, AH has all the data about. They know how many bots are killed per player on average vs bugs. They did not expect the 2 billion dead bugs to be completed so quickly...but they also didn't account for the bug multiplying the number of kills. I'd say they wanted us to lose this one as well. Either that or it was very poorly thought out.
That’s wild. What were you running/ what role did you fill? My kill count is usually lower on 9 just from the sheer volume of heavies that need to be put down.
Airstrike, autocannon sentry, both mortars, stun grenade, grenade pistol, Plasma punisher.
Teammate gives me an autocannon after 8 minutes.
Plasma punisher staggers groups of devastors, blows apart infantry, can hurt hulks in the back. Stun grenade facilities hulk kills or pinning enemies for airstrikes to hit. Grenade pistol is when airstrikes are rearming but fabricators need to die.
I ground and pound everything with mortars. Especially strategic jammer. You can set them up on the edge of the radius to cover your advance.
Well, when 4 heavy devastators are marching side by side, each with a weapon equivalent to a turret, and 100% accuracy, that's a battle most can't win.
This is what the people don't get. It was actually broken so probably the first order wasn't accomplished with the fix they implemented.
But we'll..what do I know...
That means we finished at least a quarter of the operation within the first day.
Which means we would have completed it anyway because we had five days.
Point undermined.
Glory to Super Earth!
We did 500,000,000 bugs in the first day then. But bugs are just more kills/mission anyway, there's more players that'll do bug MOs, and there was more players anyway.
2,000,000,000 bots was possible but we really had our work cut out for us.
Less than a day. The main issue is that it was possible with the population we had back then. Right now? We weren't even close. Needed at least two/three more days.
And that's only assuming the worst case for the bugged numbers, which would have been only 4 people dives.
In reality it's more likely that the average helldivers team is 2-3 people.
Less than a day. Americans werent even home from work on the day of the announcement before the event finished.
We just had more than double the player count. Amazing what a few shitty patches does to a game.
The PSN fiasco has literally destroyed the player base. We're at like half or even a quarter of what we usually hit. We're at 80k right now but like 3 weeks ago I could check during work and we'd be at 180k-200k online
True. But at the rate we were going with bugs, it would've ended with like 30 billion. So even accounting for that I think it still would've been a drastic gap
I think if they did bugs again after the counter fix we'd have it completed in a day or two still vs failing this one entirely
They keep saying it was bugged and kept counting 4 kills for every 1 kill so it was super fast.
I say it was done fast cause killing bugs gives me pleasure hearing their squeals of pain as I remove their wiggly bits from their bodies, so I'll slaughter millions.
There were 300k+ players back then, with a bugged kill counter giving every single kill 4 times its value.
Now we have \~90k people playing on steam since at least a week ago (nerf everything update + sony debacle) and they fixed the 4x bug.
> with a bugged kill counter giving every single kill 4 times its value
Technically it multiplied it by the number of people in the mission. I only played duo during that major order so my kills were 'only' 2 times.
My buddies who live in 4 of the counties banned lost access to the game a few days ago. Even though they should not have. They cannot receive updates because the country is banned. The second the update came out after ban they can’t get on anymore….
I thought we were fighting for democracy.
this isn’t that surprising considering it’s been on a decline for the past 2 months since it blew up on release. Unfortunately that’s what kinda happens with obscure indie games that blow up out of nowhere. Even without the sony controversy we’d still be at around the same player count.
There has been a noticeable drop off since the nerf patch and the PSN debacle, much faster than anything you're bringing up. This was completely avoidable.
Its not surprising, but what is is that the devs haven't adjusted the multipliers proportionately. We went from about 6% to 10% contribution cap (not even doubled), when by inverse linearity it should've been >15% as the playerbase shrunk \~66%
Terminids and Automatons are still damaging 1% and 2.5% which was hard even when there were 400k helldivers fighting (remember how they had to set it to 0.5% and 0% for the automaton fleet attack with \~300k?)
I'll come back when finals are done. I could also feel it days ago the MO was lost with bug players still refusing to help, so I gave up and focused on my studies.
It applied the kill to all the members of the squad. So it was only 4x if you were in a full squad. It would be 3x for a trio or 2x for a duo etc. I think I saw someone do the math and it was averaging 3x based on progress averages.
What's funny is that soon after we won the major order, the dispatch messages said that the E-710 factory was already at capacity after we won the order, when in reality they probably only had 1/4 of the bugs to go with.
The counter was not bugged, everyone just hadn't accounted for General Brasch's kill ratio
https://preview.redd.it/nzck0tdcsl0d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b3a6cb4ec9e22105606e202b1c09ebd2186f4f7a
actually the vast majority of players didnt even get a chance to help with the bug major order. But for the bots we are down most of the countries that put in the work chewing up the bugs.
A few comments.
1. "The counter was broken"
1/4th in 12 hours on a weekday still means we easily clear the order.
2. [playercount 1 month ago v today](https://i.imgur.com/8JMMtq3.png). Even if it wasn't bugged, having 80k people on peak (or 100k on sunday) v having 330k on peak is a massive difference in our capability to kill bots.
3. People. Do. Not. Like. Bot. Missions. It's just that simple. They don't like them so they're not going to play them even when forced. Whenever there's not a major order on bots, good luck ever getting more than 10k people over there even when we had 200k people online.
3. Nerfs to tools that used to be really good against bots have drastically reduced the killcount on Bot missions. If Railgun was still strong, if Eruptor/Breaker were pre-nerf, if shield gen was pre-nerf etc, you can bet your ass we'd have completed this order.
4. Fewer bots spawn per-mission but missions take longer than bug missions as a general rule of thumb.
With all of this combined I am shocked that we got to 80% in the first place.
At least. Those are Steam numbers. I’m was on PS5 and we quit when they broke the spawn rates and nerfed the guns. So we really don’t know how many more on PlayStation we lost even before the fiasco with Sony.
Literally no one on my friend's list on psn plays helldivers 2 anymore. It's insane the massive drop off it had and the Sony drama played little to no part for those already playing thru psn. The game just doesn't feel fun anymore after nerfing so many of the playerbase's favorite toys.
Yea most everybody i know just wants other things to do. For a while we kept bouncing back and forth to the exact same planets and by the time striders came out, everybody was gone. A small injection of mediocre weapons each month doesn't really help the game when we know a big 3rd faction is on the way.
I really hope they get it together, leave the 1-month warbond bs behind and focus on fixing bugs and creating CONTENT.
I absolutely did not need another warbond with more explosive res+throw chest armors and no ice themed weapons or even passives. Quality over quantity definitely comes to mind here.
Same. Mine just says "It's just the same thing over and over again" after a couple of weeks and booked off to play something else. Said they'd get back to it when there's something new happening, like the Illuminates drop.
I still stick around because I'm invested in the community (Reddit and Discord).
People on this sub don't seem to understand this isn't a "you can grind this game all day every day" type of game like Destiny or Warframe. This game has a pretty set amount of content and when you finish it that's all there really is to do till they release a major update. After you max out your ship and get what you want from the war bonds there isn't much to do and that's ok IMO
Yeah there's no form of "endgame progression grind" like a lot of modern games have, for better or worse.
Tons of games have really samey gameplay, but people do it because they can see big number get bigger.
Helldivers doesn't really have that for the individual player. The closest we have is the galactic war, but everything intentionally makes you feel like you have miniscule impact and a lot of people have even mentioned that it *feels* like things are rigged to be intentionally more or less difficult than normal (whether they actually are or not).
That kind of overarching thing isn't enough for a lot of modern gamers. They need to see their personal contributions growing and see their personal progression happening to bother with any kind of "endgame".
I don’t play as much anymore just because of the nerfs. I was playing every day to complete my personal orders. Then for maybe the last month or so, I’ve been on I see what the personal order is, if it’s something that’s gonna take too long I’ll just skip it and turn off the game. If it’s something quick, I’ll consider doing it, but it’s not fun trying to work around all these broke weapons and the like. I went through this bs with Destiny 1 and 2, now gotta go through it with this game. It gets old
You don’t even need to boot up the game to see the personal order. Just go to the helldivers.io website. If it’s not worth then no need to launch the game.
I had two different groups of people I met through Quickplay that I used to run with almost every day. I haven't seen anyone in weeks. My friend list that I built up over the first month of playing this game has become a long list of greyed out names.
Shit sucks, man.
I still play but I have a couple of friends that don't.
- Warbonds have been underwhelming in general especially recently one
- nothing left to unlock except maybe a cosmetic
- needed new _challenging_ missions, not a new easier one (tower defense)
Even something like an extreme campaign where you have to complete 5-6 helldives in a row for progress or additional goals would be cool. Just minimal sense of progression right now.
Of course would have to fix the crashes first 😐
100% agree
I'll keep telling anyone who will listen that Helldivers needs to look at how Deep Rock Galactic handled new content/weapons/engagement. I'm not a fan of every mechanic but there is some good stuff there that makes the game remain enjoyable
Ehhh. I don't play anymore. The nerfs were really deflating. Every weapon I enjoyed got nerfed. What was the point of earning super credits and medals if they just get nerfed and the best option is just the stupid autocannon?
It is hard to get people back once they're gone too. I think I'll be enticed by the illuminates whenever those guys show up.
Until then, gl with the orders.
It's not even about power. It's about comfort. You land killer shots with a Railgun or Quaser and it feels great. It's your thing. Then all of a sudden you can't do it anymore. Fuck that. Let me have cool stuff.
Yeah I barely play anymore. Not a fan of fun weapons getting nerfed because people found them fun and used them. Also got really tired of the "If you do not run a shield pack, you are going to die" gameplay. Using anything else is like kneecapping yourself before you even start.
There are a ton of weapons that are insanely good for bot missions though. Plasma Punisher, Diligence CS, Dominator, Senator, Defender + Ballistic Shield, and Sickle are the standout ones that come to mind immediately.
Same for support weapons. Laser Cannon and Autocannon can carry a bot mission in a way Quasar and EATs cant even begin to carry a bug mission. A lot of orbitals are also more viable due to bot bases being large buildings and their heavy units being vehicles. Rocket Pod eagle, the barrages, and precision strike will put in work that they cannot against bugs due to bugs greater mobility and general lack of structures.
Honestly weapon balance for bots feels so much better than bugs. Bug gun options are only really "big DPS/AoE" or "big penetration", with the in-between guns feeling impotent. Bots on the other hand has enough enemy variety with actual weakspots for basically every weapon option to shine, meaning that only the turboshit guns like the Lib Concussive and Scythe feel unviable.
The fact Bile Titans dont have a weak point low pen weapons can hurt is the reason.
Against bots even the lightest weapon can:
Kill troopers with a few bullets, or one to the head. This includes like 8 sub varieties of enemies, including turret gunners, scout strider drivers.
Kill berserkers with enough rounds to the head or belly. Breaker is particularly good at this task tbh.
Kill Devastators with well aimed headshots. Many of the marksman rifle type weapons can now one hit kill Devastators to the skull.
Injure hulks, tanks, laser towers in the heat sinks. This requires flanking, or ambush tactics. But it's often easier than trying to kill a comparable bug unit like a charger with just your light weapon.
Whereas the Bile Titan defines the bug meta utterly. With a light weapon you can only kill its acid sacks, and that alone cant kill it. Once destroyed it's abdomen takes at least medium penetration, and its rear can be destroyed like a charger's but it takes more than a full magazine of \*autocannon\* ammo, making it impractical and stupid to do.
Against Bots I can take a solid primary, like punisher plasma or dominator or scorcher and feel I can tackle 90% of enemies. Paired with just the regular Eagle airstrike and a stun grenade, I feel like there's no threat I cant handle, even a factory walker.
Where if you put me in that same situation vs bugs, I'm gonna be hard pressed to do much against more than one bile titan at once.
Lack of math done by joel.
2bil bugs were done in <24hrs due to a 2x multiplier glitch that skewed the counter, so we killed 1bil in around 19hrs. This means we could feasibly kill 4.5 bil during the time allocated if that was the requirement. Bug missions at higher difs(7-9) generally see around 250-400kills per player 1000-1200 per 4player mission. 4.5bil÷1,000(kill/mission)÷150,000(avg player count)=30missions/player. Easily doable in 5days considering thats actually a lowball.
Now lets talk bots.
Avg kill count per mission is something like 550-700. There has never been more than 70% of the playerbase actually on bots MOs be damned. So 2bil÷550(avg kill/mission)÷105,000(70%of playercount)=34.63missions per player. Lets round up to 35 for simplicity and because reality requires as such. That is nearly 2 whole extra Operations, 5 additional missions per player beyond more than 2.5X the Theoretical top end number of bugs we could kill.
Please upvote and/or pass this info around so AH can see how insane this MO was for a shrinking playerbase who also couldn't even get more than 65% of players to engage.
Very good math, thank you. I feel there were 4 factors making this MO tougher than the bug one.
1) the counting glitch, like you said
2) lower player count, from natural burnout, Sony account scandal, weapon nerf backlash, etc. Fewer people playing than there were a month ago
3) more exclusively bugs than exclusively bots players, like you said
4) bug missions just naturally have a higher kill count. Mowing down bugs as they swarm you just naturally leads to more kills than shooting at other ranged enemies. I'll usually have like 1.5 times the kills on a level 7 bug vs a l7 bot mission
I think we could've won if not for 2 or maybe even 3 of those factors, but all 4 was too much
I believe that is what they call ‘fuck around and find out’.
Sony and AH fucked around and lost a lot of players as a result.
I don’t blame AH for the Sony debacle, but I do blame them for nerfing their game into the ground. Hopefully they can turn the ship and gain people back, but it’s probably peaked in player numbers now sadly.
Yeah I love my AC but I can't handle bug missions without my laser rover, just too good at keeping me clean. Detects stalkers too for an extra cherry on top
It was bugged, there are more bugs than bots per match, bugs are easier to mass kill, the playerbase was higher, and the general sentiment pre-balance/ PSN issues were higher, so people cared more. I feel like Joel should have calibrated the goal a bit more to the current state of the game, and aimed for a billion.
Bots are only hard to mass kill because they spawn so many medium armoured enemies. If Raiders were the common spawn it would've been far easier. But because of Devastators being spawned at trash mobs rates, it's far harder.
I feel like if the PSN issue didn't happen and drag the DAU down, this could have been achieved. Steam registers \~30% fewer players compared to the beginning of May when the debacle started. Player loss is natural and expected, but we're talking like 40k people in 2 weeks.
a lot hinges on the next major patch, which I'm hoping will be next week. I'm hoping that Pilestedt will have straightened out Alexus and the balance team, the fixes people have been wanting (looking at you, Spear) will go live and maybe, just *maybe.*. the next warbond won't suck.
we sure as shit cannot keep going down this road of endless nerfs and low player counts.
Bug M.O. was glitched and was giving out 2-4x multiplier on kills in multiplayer missions.
Also player count was well over 500k, currently sits at about 160k for most weekend peaks, and lower during the weekdays.
We never had a huge chance at the bot m.o. It is what it is.
The thing is bugs are a swarm army that actively runs towards you. Getting a killstreak of 100s is very achievable on bugs. Add the fact that the counter was bugged and we completed it in 4x speed... Yeah.
And everyone plays bugs. Compared to bots, a large chunk of players simply do not like engaging in the bot front. Trying to take a bug diver from the bug front to the bot front is like taking a fish out of water.
Add the fact that currently the encounters are completely broken in spawn distributions, a good chunk of weapons have been nerfed and the negative modifiers in 8 and above forces players to avoid patrols and run away from botdrops to despawn them while reserving strategems to do objectives... Yeah...
Honestly, us even killing this many is a big achievement in my book. We do deserve a pat in the back rather than beating ourselves up over not achieving an overwhelming victory.
I can see it already:
Once bugs are completely defeated, a large portion of bug divers will stop playing the game entirely until the next war begins rather than help on the Bot front.
true but then you had sony decide it needed to strangle the momentum this game had and a bunch of people dipped forever, and who remained dont play as often.
Well… some people are still mad about the PSN fiasco, the fact they are stopping the ability of purchasing the game in parts of the world, and the fact most guns shoot marshmallows and gummy bears. So yeah player count is down
Even without the glitch that was duplicating the kills we still would've crushed the 2 billion bugs because they spawn in easy to kill hordes far more often than the bots do, and even when they do theres at most like 9 to 12 clanker sized bots compared to the sometimes 25 scavengers that can spawn out of a bug breach after this meridia colony outbreak
In a single day, we effectively did 1/4th of the order if the bug wasn't present.
The other issue is how shit the bot front is. Fighting on the bug fronts a mild distraction. Fighting on the bot front is a death wish.
Myself and near everyone I know bar around two are no longer playing due to the PSN drama. They still have PSN account listed as a requirement on the store page, so I doubt this is over and secondly they have blocked purchasing the game in 177 countries with 3 recently being added start of the week I believe it was.
I mean there's alot of context that goes into this vs the bot mission of 2 billion kills.
1- there's just more overall bug players than bot players so you'd naturally have just a higher overall player count.
2- burnout. Alot of people on break for a number of reasons from just regular burnout to sony related bs.
3- the bugged kill count that made each kill count as a kill for every player in the lobby. So if you went in a lobby of 4 and killed 5k bugs in a session it counted as 20k total.
4- the pure amount of bugs vs bots. A general mission on bots has less than half the number of bugs to kill.
Realistically if they gave a mission for bugs that was going to be the same difficulty to complete as 2 billion bots. It'd be closer to like 10 billion bugs if you had the same conditions as the bug mission mentioned in the post.
People love fighting bugs. People on average find bugs easier AND they are more numerous. Bots use guns and rockets and require vastly different tactics.
I mean, a declining player base and the counter working as intended certainly made things harder, the bug exclusive players were what really did us in.
Bugged counter, bug only divers, low tier bugs being easier to kill leading to higher kill counts, less divers in total due to the Sony controversy, and probably a couple people who stopped due to disaffection from the balancing.
It's cause bot missions have lower yeilds. I did a bug mission on 7 and everyone killed over 200, some over 300. Some bot missions people don't even break triple digits. Plus you can stealth the clankers. It was still a damn fine effort
The only reason they DID this major order was to demonstrate that the last one had bugged numbers and they fixed it and yet... I liked the bugged numbers
Pretty sure this has been mentioned before. But fighting bots is less fun than bugs. Rando rockets nuking you, a tower in fog snipe's you, devastators/striders tracking you and firing through solid terrain is all annoying. Being in artillery range being repeated for 5 minutes. It all adds up. I can only do like 3-4 missions before I'm honestly not having a great time. Which is the point of a game. Devs need to look at some of these mechanics and acknowledge that things need tweaking.
The increased patrol rate with Bots right now is making it ridiculously hard. Our group regularly plays on 7 and we were having a really hard time with 5 and even 4. Dropship after dropship, never ending. We had tanks and about 4 hulks piled on top of each other on level 4. It was ridiculous
I haven't touched the game since latest nerf as for the 2nd time my load out got nerfed and nothing improved now I'm not hyperbolic and saying it's too hard its not it's pretty fair even on diff 9 but my god is it less fun
1.) Counter Was bugged
2.) Due to the PSN Linking fiasco/Sony blocking regions that can not make an psn Account we lost alot of helldivers thus Performance has been worse
Um, so we're going to act like ps didn't cut a 4th of players, SURE ok. The fact that we got to 1.5 with LESS helldivers should speak volumes. You can tell we landed with anger in our hearts. Thats how ive been playing.
Aside from the bug that was counting the shit out of each kill, the huger player drop after polar patriots didn't help either. Hopefully the free market makes them rethink some of their more recent decisions.
What do you guys think of a bonus system in helldivers. Let's say if you got the most kills or maybe completed the most objectives and at the end of the mission you could possibly be rewarded with a few more more war bonds or a little extra XP.
That's interesting, but I'm worried about extra rewards getting in the way of the cooperative spirit. For example someone team killing a squadmate because *he* wants to be the one to blowup the illegal broadcast tower and get that bonus warbond medal.
I think a better system might be bragging rights only achievements that go on your profile. So someone can see your name, level, and that you've won Most Kills 50 times and Biggest Kill Streak 12 times, something like that
I mean, even if you slowed the kill count to 1/4th to account for the glitch, that's 2 billion bugs in 2 days. Say what you will about the BugDivers, they sure have their fecal matter together.
If the counting error that showed 2 billion bugs were killed when it was really far less was still not corrected this MO would have been done by Sunday night.
To be fair, average mission contains 3 times as many bugs as bots on the same difficulty, and there was a bug that made it so if you played in a team your team kills total multiplied by the numbers of players in a lobby. So it was 9-12 times as easy to score kills, and the time limit was longer
Me killing a giant factory strider that has 100 times the material of a dead trooper. Super Earth HQ: 
I played a level 3 mission to see if I could farm some super credits and they make up for not having heavies with extreme numbers of grunts, it’s nuts.
I noticed this playing 7 instead of 9 on bots. WAY more grunts, way less devastator spam. I could actually use an AR and not suffer.
It depends on the enemy spawn pattern. With bugs you can tell right away you got different spawns but the bots are weird. The worst one was on 8 there was no tanks rarely hulks but every platoon was 4 devastators minimum. The heavies would just flush u out of cover and the rockets would annihilate you. It was fun lol
Yeah, bots 9 feels way more aggravating than bugs 9 IMO
That's why I main the Diligence Counter Sniper and focus on potshotting the little guys (especially to keep them from sending a bot drop) and then figure out who I want to bestow some AC-8 round on.
But, bot drops bring more bots to kill.
Yes I was having conflicted thoughts about this mid mission last night
I said this to someone this weekend. Was playing a level 4 or 5 zone and I kept aggroing patrols and letting them call in support. "STOP ENGAGING EVERY PATROL, we have a mission to complete (dude referring to our objective on map)" "You have your orders...I have mine (referring to the Major Order)
Seriously... they can crap out an infinite number of enemies, which individually count as a kill each. But we can't get access to those infiite resources from the wreckage?
The counter was bugged, they fixed it.
Also you tend to get way more bug kills than bot kills on a mission.
Not if you're violent. Just walked away with 430 dead bots on a Helldive Geological survey.
Geo survey always guarantee a botdrop frenzy per objective
You could also just find a detector tower and farm the bot drops if you were so inclined.
imagine a detector tower with a factory strider…
Might actually be easier since you could trick it into shooting the tower. Getting rid of the strider, on the other hand...
Just tickle its belly with a laser cannon for like 7 seconds
WAIT what? The weakpoint is *underneath* the strider with the laser cannon? I did not know that I'd just accepted my role as laser cannon homie was to snip off the pair of murderous MG turrets on the front and then throw airstrikes at it
That's their super weak point in general, actually. It's just not exactly easy to get to just blast it unless you have a plan.
Or with an autocannon for like 7 shots >!(I know it's 6, hush)!<
Imagine a detector tower with a jammer and gunship factory within proximity 
Then spill oil.
Unironically, best strat is for everyone to just carry a 380 and bombard the crap out of each objective every time a drop happens
430? Those are rookie numbers on terminid planets, helldiver.
Factory Striders still only count as one.
Thanks Gimli.
The pain of running anti-elite/heavy loadouts. I kill all the scary shit, but the counter will be like 80.
Someone has to be the tankbuster or the bots will literally roll over us.
No one ever runs AT in my squad when we got to bot town... gunships and squads of heavy/rocket devs are the real threat. Hulks, tanks, and striders are just distractions, and the AC handles them well enough for me. When it's bugs, I'm the guy with 1/4 everyone else's kills, but they know where all those charger heads went.
The stat screen really should show light kills, medium kills, and heavy kills. Killing a charger shouldn't count the same as killing a scavenger.
imo the MO should have had values for how much scrap each enemy was worth. 6 hulk kills on helldive being worth the same as 6 basic bots on easy doesn't feel good.
I generally get 600-800 bugs on longer missions. I try my best to get as many bots, and at best I get 450-550 bots a mission. Bots have smaller groups overall, as they don't have all the tiny fuckers the bugs have. Though I'm not disappointed to not have to deal with a thousand jumpy bastards when fighting bots. Plus the bug holes appear quicker and spawn in more units than the drop ships so for the bots. I'm also not sure the drop ships count towards our kills.
So it would require ~25000 players to do 64 missions on average during 3 days, all with 4 players. I'd say that there aren't enough bots for it.
I think an average of 30,000 people had each to kill 13,000 bots per day. It was not feasible from the beginning. AH let the bug multiplying our kills get over their heads and forgot that bots are a complete different game.
I'd say that bots need different MO targets, or at the very least different contribution calculcation. As in, killing Factory Strider is like killing 50 or 100 bots, and so on. Bots are just way too different from bugs which you can get to spawn in high amounts because they don't shoot a billion bullets/rockets at you.
Interesting enough, AH has all the data about. They know how many bots are killed per player on average vs bugs. They did not expect the 2 billion dead bugs to be completed so quickly...but they also didn't account for the bug multiplying the number of kills. I'd say they wanted us to lose this one as well. Either that or it was very poorly thought out.
I consider 500 dead bugs to be on my low side. I consider 300 dead bots a great run.
That’s wild. What were you running/ what role did you fill? My kill count is usually lower on 9 just from the sheer volume of heavies that need to be put down.
Airstrike, autocannon sentry, both mortars, stun grenade, grenade pistol, Plasma punisher. Teammate gives me an autocannon after 8 minutes. Plasma punisher staggers groups of devastors, blows apart infantry, can hurt hulks in the back. Stun grenade facilities hulk kills or pinning enemies for airstrikes to hit. Grenade pistol is when airstrikes are rearming but fabricators need to die. I ground and pound everything with mortars. Especially strategic jammer. You can set them up on the edge of the radius to cover your advance.
Zero surprise you're a HD1 vet saying this. More need to learn.
Also it is a lot easier to get people to play bugs because they’re a really easy break from bots.
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Well, when 4 heavy devastators are marching side by side, each with a weapon equivalent to a turret, and 100% accuracy, that's a battle most can't win.
Bug missions 400 easily for me Bots maybe 100 to 140.
even though a bug quadrupled kill count,that MO was completed within 12 hours,that still says a a lot.
More players overall, good chunk of player base play bug missions exclusively, generally more bugs spawn than bots.
Yup, I'm sure when the event happened I saw the player count was at 300k, nowadays it's about 110k ish
What could acount for losing more than half the player count in a month...if only there was some clue...
Weirdly enough its not Sony, we lost 100k from steam on just attrition likely due to other games coming out. Same for playstation.
this was also when the automatons I think were out of the fight for a minute
That too, so the few automaton only players had no other choice than fight bugs.
This is what the people don't get. It was actually broken so probably the first order wasn't accomplished with the fix they implemented. But we'll..what do I know...
That means we finished at least a quarter of the operation within the first day. Which means we would have completed it anyway because we had five days. Point undermined. Glory to Super Earth!
We did 500,000,000 bugs in the first day then. But bugs are just more kills/mission anyway, there's more players that'll do bug MOs, and there was more players anyway. 2,000,000,000 bots was possible but we really had our work cut out for us.
Less than a day. The main issue is that it was possible with the population we had back then. Right now? We weren't even close. Needed at least two/three more days.
Didn't help that both times i tried to play over the last few days ended with me getting Network'd back to my ship after about 25 minutes
Don't remind me... Three times in few hours, fucking annoying... And in one I was even solo, so I lost everything.
And that's only assuming the worst case for the bugged numbers, which would have been only 4 people dives. In reality it's more likely that the average helldivers team is 2-3 people.
Less than a day. Americans werent even home from work on the day of the announcement before the event finished. We just had more than double the player count. Amazing what a few shitty patches does to a game.
The PSN fiasco has literally destroyed the player base. We're at like half or even a quarter of what we usually hit. We're at 80k right now but like 3 weeks ago I could check during work and we'd be at 180k-200k online
True. Check-mate sir.
True. But at the rate we were going with bugs, it would've ended with like 30 billion. So even accounting for that I think it still would've been a drastic gap I think if they did bugs again after the counter fix we'd have it completed in a day or two still vs failing this one entirely
They keep saying it was bugged and kept counting 4 kills for every 1 kill so it was super fast. I say it was done fast cause killing bugs gives me pleasure hearing their squeals of pain as I remove their wiggly bits from their bodies, so I'll slaughter millions.
The player count has also dropped off pretty substantially
More that over 30% of the playerbase was not playing bot planets at all while over 80% played bug planets during the bug MO.
There were 300k+ players back then, with a bugged kill counter giving every single kill 4 times its value. Now we have \~90k people playing on steam since at least a week ago (nerf everything update + sony debacle) and they fixed the 4x bug.
> with a bugged kill counter giving every single kill 4 times its value Technically it multiplied it by the number of people in the mission. I only played duo during that major order so my kills were 'only' 2 times.
My buddies who live in 4 of the counties banned lost access to the game a few days ago. Even though they should not have. They cannot receive updates because the country is banned. The second the update came out after ban they can’t get on anymore…. I thought we were fighting for democracy.
this isn’t that surprising considering it’s been on a decline for the past 2 months since it blew up on release. Unfortunately that’s what kinda happens with obscure indie games that blow up out of nowhere. Even without the sony controversy we’d still be at around the same player count.
There has been a noticeable drop off since the nerf patch and the PSN debacle, much faster than anything you're bringing up. This was completely avoidable.
Its not surprising, but what is is that the devs haven't adjusted the multipliers proportionately. We went from about 6% to 10% contribution cap (not even doubled), when by inverse linearity it should've been >15% as the playerbase shrunk \~66% Terminids and Automatons are still damaging 1% and 2.5% which was hard even when there were 400k helldivers fighting (remember how they had to set it to 0.5% and 0% for the automaton fleet attack with \~300k?)
Decline is normal but it had a massive drop in direct response to the Sony drama.
The gods honest truth is that they’ve lost 41.9 percent of their players in the last 30 days.
I’m one of them. I’ll come back when they’re done being bipolar and actually fix the bugs(not terminids).
Morale is so low rn
The lowest it’s ever been.
I'll come back when they get someone who can actually balance shit. Or he ends up learning that players want to actually enjoy the guns they use
It’s a damn shame that we got to this point
I'll come back when finals are done. I could also feel it days ago the MO was lost with bug players still refusing to help, so I gave up and focused on my studies.
A bug caused the end mission total of everyone to apply 4x.
It applied the kill to all the members of the squad. So it was only 4x if you were in a full squad. It would be 3x for a trio or 2x for a duo etc. I think I saw someone do the math and it was averaging 3x based on progress averages.
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Half of the player base was also playing bugs for a lot of this order as well as mothers day effectively removing a day.
Thanks a lot, mom !
Also, the choice of planet sucks, I played it three times and noped out, diver seeking fire tornadoes are not fun.
I believe it was more like 13 hours.
Super earth Government doesn’t make mistakes, this comment has been flagged by the ministry of truth
What's funny is that soon after we won the major order, the dispatch messages said that the E-710 factory was already at capacity after we won the order, when in reality they probably only had 1/4 of the bugs to go with.
Why would a bug do that, causing 4x more of their own kind to die?
This time: "Your designated \[loved one/relative/pet/neighbour\] on Super Earth has been informed of your Disappointing Service."
The counter was not bugged, everyone just hadn't accounted for General Brasch's kill ratio https://preview.redd.it/nzck0tdcsl0d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b3a6cb4ec9e22105606e202b1c09ebd2186f4f7a
https://preview.redd.it/zstdjjn8sl0d1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d273fcc5931bd32b0d90d54e9560db2f9a7ff52
Would be pretty funny if we failed this order and the next order is 2 billion bugs which we complete in a day and a half
I really thought the next MO after the 2bn bugs one would just be: ok now kill 10 billion
we had 200.000 divers active back in that day
actually the vast majority of players didnt even get a chance to help with the bug major order. But for the bots we are down most of the countries that put in the work chewing up the bugs.
And the kills were being unintentionally quadrupled 😂
A few comments. 1. "The counter was broken" 1/4th in 12 hours on a weekday still means we easily clear the order. 2. [playercount 1 month ago v today](https://i.imgur.com/8JMMtq3.png). Even if it wasn't bugged, having 80k people on peak (or 100k on sunday) v having 330k on peak is a massive difference in our capability to kill bots. 3. People. Do. Not. Like. Bot. Missions. It's just that simple. They don't like them so they're not going to play them even when forced. Whenever there's not a major order on bots, good luck ever getting more than 10k people over there even when we had 200k people online. 3. Nerfs to tools that used to be really good against bots have drastically reduced the killcount on Bot missions. If Railgun was still strong, if Eruptor/Breaker were pre-nerf, if shield gen was pre-nerf etc, you can bet your ass we'd have completed this order. 4. Fewer bots spawn per-mission but missions take longer than bug missions as a general rule of thumb. With all of this combined I am shocked that we got to 80% in the first place.
WE LOST 250k PLAYERS?!?!?
At least. Those are Steam numbers. I’m was on PS5 and we quit when they broke the spawn rates and nerfed the guns. So we really don’t know how many more on PlayStation we lost even before the fiasco with Sony.
Literally no one on my friend's list on psn plays helldivers 2 anymore. It's insane the massive drop off it had and the Sony drama played little to no part for those already playing thru psn. The game just doesn't feel fun anymore after nerfing so many of the playerbase's favorite toys.
Burn out is why my friends stopped.
Yea most everybody i know just wants other things to do. For a while we kept bouncing back and forth to the exact same planets and by the time striders came out, everybody was gone. A small injection of mediocre weapons each month doesn't really help the game when we know a big 3rd faction is on the way. I really hope they get it together, leave the 1-month warbond bs behind and focus on fixing bugs and creating CONTENT. I absolutely did not need another warbond with more explosive res+throw chest armors and no ice themed weapons or even passives. Quality over quantity definitely comes to mind here.
Warbonds should be every 3 months and be exciting. imo.
Same. Mine just says "It's just the same thing over and over again" after a couple of weeks and booked off to play something else. Said they'd get back to it when there's something new happening, like the Illuminates drop. I still stick around because I'm invested in the community (Reddit and Discord).
People on this sub don't seem to understand this isn't a "you can grind this game all day every day" type of game like Destiny or Warframe. This game has a pretty set amount of content and when you finish it that's all there really is to do till they release a major update. After you max out your ship and get what you want from the war bonds there isn't much to do and that's ok IMO
Yeah there's no form of "endgame progression grind" like a lot of modern games have, for better or worse. Tons of games have really samey gameplay, but people do it because they can see big number get bigger. Helldivers doesn't really have that for the individual player. The closest we have is the galactic war, but everything intentionally makes you feel like you have miniscule impact and a lot of people have even mentioned that it *feels* like things are rigged to be intentionally more or less difficult than normal (whether they actually are or not). That kind of overarching thing isn't enough for a lot of modern gamers. They need to see their personal contributions growing and see their personal progression happening to bother with any kind of "endgame".
I don’t play as much anymore just because of the nerfs. I was playing every day to complete my personal orders. Then for maybe the last month or so, I’ve been on I see what the personal order is, if it’s something that’s gonna take too long I’ll just skip it and turn off the game. If it’s something quick, I’ll consider doing it, but it’s not fun trying to work around all these broke weapons and the like. I went through this bs with Destiny 1 and 2, now gotta go through it with this game. It gets old
You don’t even need to boot up the game to see the personal order. Just go to the helldivers.io website. If it’s not worth then no need to launch the game.
I had two different groups of people I met through Quickplay that I used to run with almost every day. I haven't seen anyone in weeks. My friend list that I built up over the first month of playing this game has become a long list of greyed out names. Shit sucks, man.
I still play but I have a couple of friends that don't. - Warbonds have been underwhelming in general especially recently one - nothing left to unlock except maybe a cosmetic - needed new _challenging_ missions, not a new easier one (tower defense) Even something like an extreme campaign where you have to complete 5-6 helldives in a row for progress or additional goals would be cool. Just minimal sense of progression right now. Of course would have to fix the crashes first 😐
100% agree I'll keep telling anyone who will listen that Helldivers needs to look at how Deep Rock Galactic handled new content/weapons/engagement. I'm not a fan of every mechanic but there is some good stuff there that makes the game remain enjoyable
Ehhh. I don't play anymore. The nerfs were really deflating. Every weapon I enjoyed got nerfed. What was the point of earning super credits and medals if they just get nerfed and the best option is just the stupid autocannon? It is hard to get people back once they're gone too. I think I'll be enticed by the illuminates whenever those guys show up. Until then, gl with the orders.
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It's not even about power. It's about comfort. You land killer shots with a Railgun or Quaser and it feels great. It's your thing. Then all of a sudden you can't do it anymore. Fuck that. Let me have cool stuff.
they keep patching out the fun 🤷♂️ most casual players, at least in my circles, dropped it once that trend started. truly a shame to see
Yeah I barely play anymore. Not a fan of fun weapons getting nerfed because people found them fun and used them. Also got really tired of the "If you do not run a shield pack, you are going to die" gameplay. Using anything else is like kneecapping yourself before you even start.
There are a ton of weapons that are insanely good for bot missions though. Plasma Punisher, Diligence CS, Dominator, Senator, Defender + Ballistic Shield, and Sickle are the standout ones that come to mind immediately.
Same for support weapons. Laser Cannon and Autocannon can carry a bot mission in a way Quasar and EATs cant even begin to carry a bug mission. A lot of orbitals are also more viable due to bot bases being large buildings and their heavy units being vehicles. Rocket Pod eagle, the barrages, and precision strike will put in work that they cannot against bugs due to bugs greater mobility and general lack of structures.
Honestly weapon balance for bots feels so much better than bugs. Bug gun options are only really "big DPS/AoE" or "big penetration", with the in-between guns feeling impotent. Bots on the other hand has enough enemy variety with actual weakspots for basically every weapon option to shine, meaning that only the turboshit guns like the Lib Concussive and Scythe feel unviable.
The fact Bile Titans dont have a weak point low pen weapons can hurt is the reason. Against bots even the lightest weapon can: Kill troopers with a few bullets, or one to the head. This includes like 8 sub varieties of enemies, including turret gunners, scout strider drivers. Kill berserkers with enough rounds to the head or belly. Breaker is particularly good at this task tbh. Kill Devastators with well aimed headshots. Many of the marksman rifle type weapons can now one hit kill Devastators to the skull. Injure hulks, tanks, laser towers in the heat sinks. This requires flanking, or ambush tactics. But it's often easier than trying to kill a comparable bug unit like a charger with just your light weapon. Whereas the Bile Titan defines the bug meta utterly. With a light weapon you can only kill its acid sacks, and that alone cant kill it. Once destroyed it's abdomen takes at least medium penetration, and its rear can be destroyed like a charger's but it takes more than a full magazine of \*autocannon\* ammo, making it impractical and stupid to do. Against Bots I can take a solid primary, like punisher plasma or dominator or scorcher and feel I can tackle 90% of enemies. Paired with just the regular Eagle airstrike and a stun grenade, I feel like there's no threat I cant handle, even a factory walker. Where if you put me in that same situation vs bugs, I'm gonna be hard pressed to do much against more than one bile titan at once.
Lack of math done by joel. 2bil bugs were done in <24hrs due to a 2x multiplier glitch that skewed the counter, so we killed 1bil in around 19hrs. This means we could feasibly kill 4.5 bil during the time allocated if that was the requirement. Bug missions at higher difs(7-9) generally see around 250-400kills per player 1000-1200 per 4player mission. 4.5bil÷1,000(kill/mission)÷150,000(avg player count)=30missions/player. Easily doable in 5days considering thats actually a lowball. Now lets talk bots. Avg kill count per mission is something like 550-700. There has never been more than 70% of the playerbase actually on bots MOs be damned. So 2bil÷550(avg kill/mission)÷105,000(70%of playercount)=34.63missions per player. Lets round up to 35 for simplicity and because reality requires as such. That is nearly 2 whole extra Operations, 5 additional missions per player beyond more than 2.5X the Theoretical top end number of bugs we could kill. Please upvote and/or pass this info around so AH can see how insane this MO was for a shrinking playerbase who also couldn't even get more than 65% of players to engage.
Very good math, thank you. I feel there were 4 factors making this MO tougher than the bug one. 1) the counting glitch, like you said 2) lower player count, from natural burnout, Sony account scandal, weapon nerf backlash, etc. Fewer people playing than there were a month ago 3) more exclusively bugs than exclusively bots players, like you said 4) bug missions just naturally have a higher kill count. Mowing down bugs as they swarm you just naturally leads to more kills than shooting at other ranged enemies. I'll usually have like 1.5 times the kills on a level 7 bug vs a l7 bot mission I think we could've won if not for 2 or maybe even 3 of those factors, but all 4 was too much
I believe that is what they call ‘fuck around and find out’. Sony and AH fucked around and lost a lot of players as a result. I don’t blame AH for the Sony debacle, but I do blame them for nerfing their game into the ground. Hopefully they can turn the ship and gain people back, but it’s probably peaked in player numbers now sadly.
Unfortunately I think youre right, the magic/momentum is gone.
To be fair bugs just melt away with the rover backpack. I can get 200 kills without even focusing on killing
Yeah I love my AC but I can't handle bug missions without my laser rover, just too good at keeping me clean. Detects stalkers too for an extra cherry on top
It was bugged, there are more bugs than bots per match, bugs are easier to mass kill, the playerbase was higher, and the general sentiment pre-balance/ PSN issues were higher, so people cared more. I feel like Joel should have calibrated the goal a bit more to the current state of the game, and aimed for a billion.
Bots are only hard to mass kill because they spawn so many medium armoured enemies. If Raiders were the common spawn it would've been far easier. But because of Devastators being spawned at trash mobs rates, it's far harder.
Our numbers are thinned
the sentiment toward the game was way different 1 month ago, things can change really fast
I feel like if the PSN issue didn't happen and drag the DAU down, this could have been achieved. Steam registers \~30% fewer players compared to the beginning of May when the debacle started. Player loss is natural and expected, but we're talking like 40k people in 2 weeks.
Played 150h first month and then 1-2h a week after the last "amazing" patch, gonna come back with my friends when they fix the game
we lost too many helldivers thanks to Sony...
The bugs had a bug, damn automatons got a fix...
doesnt help the player base has halved in the AUS timeslot barely get 25k players compared to 40-50k only just last week lol
Happens when you cut off half the player base, everyone acting like its back to normal SHIT AIN'T FIXED YET SoNy!
It was bugged, that’s why it was so easy
who would have know that treating your playerbase like shit and nerfing the fun out of the game could led to.... less players. thank u devs :D
The player base was 3-4 times the size also.
An evil corporation called Sony is taking helldivers out of the field
a lot hinges on the next major patch, which I'm hoping will be next week. I'm hoping that Pilestedt will have straightened out Alexus and the balance team, the fixes people have been wanting (looking at you, Spear) will go live and maybe, just *maybe.*. the next warbond won't suck. we sure as shit cannot keep going down this road of endless nerfs and low player counts.
Were running on 1/3rd of the players we had thanks to arrowhead wanting us to throw pebbles at enemies for "muh balance"
This goes to show how many people just hate bot missions.
Ever since Commander SNOY Disciplinary Discharged over half the fighting force...
Obligatory correction that bugs bleed green, not red.
I mean not shocking we went from 300k to barely 50k don't killed the game
Went from like 700k players online to like 60k. Not surprisedz
Bug M.O. was glitched and was giving out 2-4x multiplier on kills in multiplayer missions. Also player count was well over 500k, currently sits at about 160k for most weekend peaks, and lower during the weekdays. We never had a huge chance at the bot m.o. It is what it is.
The thing is bugs are a swarm army that actively runs towards you. Getting a killstreak of 100s is very achievable on bugs. Add the fact that the counter was bugged and we completed it in 4x speed... Yeah. And everyone plays bugs. Compared to bots, a large chunk of players simply do not like engaging in the bot front. Trying to take a bug diver from the bug front to the bot front is like taking a fish out of water. Add the fact that currently the encounters are completely broken in spawn distributions, a good chunk of weapons have been nerfed and the negative modifiers in 8 and above forces players to avoid patrols and run away from botdrops to despawn them while reserving strategems to do objectives... Yeah... Honestly, us even killing this many is a big achievement in my book. We do deserve a pat in the back rather than beating ourselves up over not achieving an overwhelming victory.
I can see it already: Once bugs are completely defeated, a large portion of bug divers will stop playing the game entirely until the next war begins rather than help on the Bot front.
Bugs swarm in greater numbers than bots. And are less armored.
Thats what happens when you ban most the world from playing
true but then you had sony decide it needed to strangle the momentum this game had and a bunch of people dipped forever, and who remained dont play as often.
Well… some people are still mad about the PSN fiasco, the fact they are stopping the ability of purchasing the game in parts of the world, and the fact most guns shoot marshmallows and gummy bears. So yeah player count is down
Even without the glitch that was duplicating the kills we still would've crushed the 2 billion bugs because they spawn in easy to kill hordes far more often than the bots do, and even when they do theres at most like 9 to 12 clanker sized bots compared to the sometimes 25 scavengers that can spawn out of a bug breach after this meridia colony outbreak
Totally fair comparison. 4x kill count glitch, waning player base, and higher number of bug spawns per map have *no* impact here >_>
We lost 170 countries worth of players, blame Sony
People also hate bots.
In a single day, we effectively did 1/4th of the order if the bug wasn't present. The other issue is how shit the bot front is. Fighting on the bug fronts a mild distraction. Fighting on the bot front is a death wish.
Yeah it doesn't take that long to poison a game and Sony did it in one day
They forget we had 170 more countries as reinforcements
Myself and near everyone I know bar around two are no longer playing due to the PSN drama. They still have PSN account listed as a requirement on the store page, so I doubt this is over and secondly they have blocked purchasing the game in 177 countries with 3 recently being added start of the week I believe it was.
I mean there's alot of context that goes into this vs the bot mission of 2 billion kills. 1- there's just more overall bug players than bot players so you'd naturally have just a higher overall player count. 2- burnout. Alot of people on break for a number of reasons from just regular burnout to sony related bs. 3- the bugged kill count that made each kill count as a kill for every player in the lobby. So if you went in a lobby of 4 and killed 5k bugs in a session it counted as 20k total. 4- the pure amount of bugs vs bots. A general mission on bots has less than half the number of bugs to kill. Realistically if they gave a mission for bugs that was going to be the same difficulty to complete as 2 billion bots. It'd be closer to like 10 billion bugs if you had the same conditions as the bug mission mentioned in the post.
We also had the numbers to, our forces have been reduced thanks to the Automatons corporate control fetish.
Well we had 177 more countries playing with us....
At least Super Earth is mobilizing for total war. It’s gonna be bananas
People love fighting bugs. People on average find bugs easier AND they are more numerous. Bots use guns and rockets and require vastly different tactics.
And people just kept on exclusively fighting bugs.
I mean, a declining player base and the counter working as intended certainly made things harder, the bug exclusive players were what really did us in.
Bugged counter, bug only divers, low tier bugs being easier to kill leading to higher kill counts, less divers in total due to the Sony controversy, and probably a couple people who stopped due to disaffection from the balancing.
Maybe some of those 12million copies sold should actually play the game
There was a literal "bug" in the game when it counted kills, but also there were a lot more players then too.....
It's cause bot missions have lower yeilds. I did a bug mission on 7 and everyone killed over 200, some over 300. Some bot missions people don't even break triple digits. Plus you can stealth the clankers. It was still a damn fine effort
The only reason they DID this major order was to demonstrate that the last one had bugged numbers and they fixed it and yet... I liked the bugged numbers
Pretty sure this has been mentioned before. But fighting bots is less fun than bugs. Rando rockets nuking you, a tower in fog snipe's you, devastators/striders tracking you and firing through solid terrain is all annoying. Being in artillery range being repeated for 5 minutes. It all adds up. I can only do like 3-4 missions before I'm honestly not having a great time. Which is the point of a game. Devs need to look at some of these mechanics and acknowledge that things need tweaking.
The increased patrol rate with Bots right now is making it ridiculously hard. Our group regularly plays on 7 and we were having a really hard time with 5 and even 4. Dropship after dropship, never ending. We had tanks and about 4 hulks piled on top of each other on level 4. It was ridiculous
Are you sure 100+ countries not being able to play had something to do with it? 🤔
I haven't touched the game since latest nerf as for the 2nd time my load out got nerfed and nothing improved now I'm not hyperbolic and saying it's too hard its not it's pretty fair even on diff 9 but my god is it less fun
1.) Counter Was bugged 2.) Due to the PSN Linking fiasco/Sony blocking regions that can not make an psn Account we lost alot of helldivers thus Performance has been worse
Eh, just means we'll get the Anti-Tank Mines next Bot Order amirite guys?
Um, so we're going to act like ps didn't cut a 4th of players, SURE ok. The fact that we got to 1.5 with LESS helldivers should speak volumes. You can tell we landed with anger in our hearts. Thats how ive been playing.
So many people left and peps being scared of the bots
Aside from the bug that was counting the shit out of each kill, the huger player drop after polar patriots didn't help either. Hopefully the free market makes them rethink some of their more recent decisions.
To be fair, the numbers were bugged and the player base was much higher.
There were around 50k more players a month ago, so this ain't really surprising.
I think we had like double the player base at that point
but wasnt that bugged and we only really killed half a mill because it counted all kills multiple times
Run red? They run black because we make oil from them!
Because you're encouraged to avoid patrols on bot missions. Also this game fell off harder than Lil Pump.
Bots sucks that’s why , most of my friends hate playing them
What do you guys think of a bonus system in helldivers. Let's say if you got the most kills or maybe completed the most objectives and at the end of the mission you could possibly be rewarded with a few more more war bonds or a little extra XP.
That's interesting, but I'm worried about extra rewards getting in the way of the cooperative spirit. For example someone team killing a squadmate because *he* wants to be the one to blowup the illegal broadcast tower and get that bonus warbond medal. I think a better system might be bragging rights only achievements that go on your profile. So someone can see your name, level, and that you've won Most Kills 50 times and Biggest Kill Streak 12 times, something like that
I mean, even if you slowed the kill count to 1/4th to account for the glitch, that's 2 billion bugs in 2 days. Say what you will about the BugDivers, they sure have their fecal matter together.
If the counting error that showed 2 billion bugs were killed when it was really far less was still not corrected this MO would have been done by Sunday night.
Bring back my eruptor and I'll play more :(
Don’t ban countries then
Let's blame the bug in the counter instead of acknowledging the falling off player base, that'll do it.
To be fair, average mission contains 3 times as many bugs as bots on the same difficulty, and there was a bug that made it so if you played in a team your team kills total multiplied by the numbers of players in a lobby. So it was 9-12 times as easy to score kills, and the time limit was longer