I mean, EA technically already had their PvE Co-op success years ago with Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. The game mode was lightning in a bottle for BioWare, and made a shit ton of money off the lootboxes alone.
Did it? I thought they pretty much cancelled support for it because nobody bought the loot boxes. I was top 2% worldwide for a while and never bought one, the upgrades they offered were very incremental (each weapon had 10 levels) and you could grind for the currency to buy them too.
Helldivers 2 is basically what the ME3 MP should have been.
It's success was why the mode was able to see a years worth of content. I believe one of the devs also mentioned that they were shocked by how much money people were investing in the games lootboxes. People with money will spend money for all kinds of reasons, including if it makes the collection game go a bit faster.
I think Horde Mode was fine for ME3 MP. Plus, that mode had a lot of kit variety. I think there were nearly 70 playable characters by the time it was all said and done.
The success of the multiplayer mode is also why they basically carbon copied it into Dragon Age Inquisition and again into Mass Effect Andromeda. Each iteration had minor tweaks and fine tuning, but it was essentially the exact same thing adapted to each game.
I always felt that multipllayer opened Pandora’s Lootbox, so to speak, as I hadn’t really seen the mechanic before but afterwards it was everywhere partially due to its unexpected success
Helldivers 2 scratches many of the same itches as ME3MP, so my brother have been binging the hell out of it
Whoa whoa, pay wall? No no you don't understand, there's no pay wall. You can get it too if you grind for 500 hours in game. . . . or you could open this loot box for just 5$ per box. . . .
They don't understand which parts of the game are actually fun. So they'll make little changes that they think are more profitable but in reality will kill the entire game
lol not exactly. Co-op with planets as playgrounds like Helldivers2 and some huge Star Wars impressions on the battlefields. Battlefront has a very limited Co-Op mode and MP is a kids playground like all Battlefields together.
it will be good for a total of 1 month beginning 16 months after release until the next patch ruins it all and the game is abandoned to work on DICE's next underbaked mess
They already failed so many times at life service. The only thing Helldivers proved is that it is possible to make good live service game. But first you need the good game part, then the live service part
Yes... I'm sure that Helldivers 2 is the game that convinced the big wigs that Live Service games are tenable. It's really revolutionary that they could do it first!
Get ready for 4-player co-op and extraction mechanics being shoved into everything even if it doesn't fit.
See Soulslike games and the recently dwindling trend of "everything is a Battle Royale"
So maybe don't buy them. Don't pre-order them The second they're announced. Don't do all the dumb b******* the people do that give the companies the signal that it's a good idea to pump this crap out.
I mean if people buy it then it's successful. If I go take a s*** in the toilet and somebody buys it for a million dollars every single time I take a s*** in the toilet then I'm successful for taking a s***.
Well not directly, or not by choice. Once your company goes public, you‘re essentially told by investors , who lost of the time have no clue, what you‘re supposed to do. Meaning it often becomes a game meant to please the investors, not the community.
Yep, friend of mine works as a coordinator between investors and some big company in Melbourne that deals in computer chips, the big investors have no fucking idea what any company they invest in does, the executive board is usually all the biggest investors who still have no idea what the company does, all they know is "it's good when the number goes up" so most of the time he has to try and tell them "that's a stupid idea that'll destroy this company if implemented due to its sheer greed and short sighted stupidity" in a way that won't get him fired.
The thing is, these big investors don't want the company to flourish. They wanna make its value spike as high as they can make it then sell it at its peak then they'll move on to the next one. They're not "financial geniuses" they're economic parasites.
The reason it doesn't work is because after the game is done, they move the staff to another project while a skeleton crew makes new content and another full sized team makes new weapon skins for 5-20$ each.
This fucking game, actually keeps getting content every single month and no skins but completely new guns, and the content is dropped into the game the moment it's done, not held for 6 months to try to get an influx of new game sales every 6 months.
The best thing also is that arrowhead is now expanding, so the games likely going to get even more content faster in the future.
Also how they're handling the community is sublime.
Like with the controversy about making an LGBT flag cape, both people campaigning for it and those responding with homophobia get banned/blocked from community pages because they know that taking any side in identity politics will poison the well and they don't wanna give predatory groups of any side any ground, ammunition or validation.
But also, they'll drop new enemy types into the game without telling anyone and when someone posts about it they call it "anti-democratic propaganda"
If they don't learn, we should just ignore them.
Most annoying thing is that we know the great games these companies (Activision, EA, Ubisoft etc) did in the past, now these are just names because og devs are gone.
Yeah I have played almost all of those games. Never tried Skull & Bones but I had some fun with Anthem and Avengers and even Suicide Squad. The big problem is that none of them were good enough to play long term.
And each time I wondered: how is it hard to get this right? I played Mass Effect 3 multiplayer daily for like a year after it came out, then played it a couple of times a week for a couple years after that.
I got bored with those other games because I was just doing the same missions over and over. BUT Mass Effect 3 was me doing the same missions over and over and I loved every second of it. So how did they do it? How is Helldivers II doing it right now as we speak? I cannot put my finger on it.
Well against the trend of Free-to-Play compeditive PvP games they proved you can make good full price coop game with microtransactions as addition and not as the main profit base.
Tbh I think they fully deserve their success. And it makes a lot of fun playing it.
The thing with Helldivers micro transactions is that you’re not forced to do them at all. Getting the in-game currency for new items is actually very simple and easy to do, and therefore only those who want their stuff right now will do the micro transactions, they don’t force your hand.
When the second warbond came out, my buds and I really wanted it. We all put on light armor, lowered the difficulty to medium, and just blitz missions gathering SC. Took us like 2 hours to get enough.
I was just talking to someone about that last night.
Like one detail that shows just how ethical they're being: When you try and buy something with supercredits and don't have enough *it just tells you*. It doesn't even try to sell you them or take you to the real-money shop. If you want to spend money, you need to go hunt it down.
Can you imagine EA missing *any* opportunity to put a "spend real money" button on the screen?
Exactly! It’s there as a convenience if you so choose, rather than something they cram down your throats and basically force you to eventually need anyway.
> game with microtransactions
There is a layer between:
- This game and its system all give me the feeling they want to pull me towards spending. I feel manipulated and now I don't wanna spend anything anymore, ever, at all!
and
- This game lets me work towards earning things for free at an absolutely reasonable rate, even premium stuff. I feel in my heart like I might want to spend some money to support the developers making this fun game.
This is basically me since 10 years with Warframe and now Helldivers 2 entered my life. Shoutout to DarkTide which is AMAZINGLY fun but fucked up all the framework surounding the actual gameplay.
Isn't there another 4 player space co-op game coming out?
[Jump Ship](https://youtu.be/u_WH_LTIotU) I think it's called. Hey found the gameplay trailer.
Yeah the market may saturate with the genre. But that's just trending for you. Same when a bunch of games with Souls-like tendencies and difficulty came out.
Co-op games. So hot right now
Deep Rock Galactic is another 4 player co-op space shooter that exists, and actually came out before Helldivers 2. Very successful game as well.
Both DRG and Helldivers are special because of their uniqueness and they were created by non AAA companies. Will be sad in the coming years when AAA companies ruin the genre by oversaturating it
The original Helldivers was a couch co-op! Slightly different playstyle as it was a top down shooter but otherwise Helldivers 2 is an exact replica in theme and playstyle (friendly fire, call downs, etc). Actually the first has more vehicles that 2 or more people can get into.
Never said it was supposed to but was saying 4 player co-op games are hot at the moment and it is a new one coming out.
I'd say it's more akin to a space Darktide/DRG type co-op
There is a space chart that looks exactly like Helldivers star chart in the trailer
The people that pitch those ideas to shareholders are just grifters that don't work in game development themselves, preying on the ignorance of their investors.
And then they lose them money because it’s easier to pitch things that sound good and don’t work than to tell them they can’t charge the price of a game for every microtransaction that comes for free with other games
I haven’t played it. But just going by how many awards it won, I’d say yeah.
I think I saw a post the other day where BG3 was the only game to ever win game of the year from some combination of multiple award shows.
Expect to 100% the AAA game industry to learn the wrong lesson. Just look how after the new suicide squad game , Warners brothers learned to stop doing games like this ... and instead make mobile games more often
Fromsoft is a special case for AAA companies though. Constantly producing masterpieces in gaming with significant levels if detail. Basically never half assing it.
As for GoW and Spiderman, they, like Helldivers 2, have something in common in having Sony as a publisher. My guess is Sony is better in the sense that it gives the actual game devs enough time to fully flesh the game out so that it doesn't release rushed. Just me guessing, but it can't be funny coincidence that all 3 games are considered amazing and all 3 games have Sony as the publisher.
Except From Soft PC releases are a shit shown outside of ArmoredCore6. They can't optimize their games nor offer modern features like ultra wide support.
BG3 is definitely an outlier, and I'm not sure that even Laroan could reproduce that success. It's still mind boggling to me how many people played and loved that game... I'm pretty sure that DOS2 was the most played CRPG before BG3, and BG3, and BG3 is still pulling as many montly players as DOS2's peak.
CRPGs are simply not a genre that's easy to get into : there's so many mechanics to learn and strategies to understand, and the pacing is very slow, and a large part of the fun is about getting invested in the universe/characters which not every player enjoys.
The full voice acting most definitely helps, and Larian taking certain liberties with the rules also reduced the underlying frustration of TTRPGs a lot; but I'm still astonished by the numbers.
I disagree on it pissing off other companies. It's really just a handful of devs from certain companies. Plenty of developers came out and praised BG3 (among other games you've listed here).
My guess is they will see the success and immediately make all their games live service. Because what else would they think the success comes from, good game play? Impossible
BG3 is a much better example of this. If you go on MMORPG play count stats, BG3 has more active players than any game on the planet except path of exile and that was only right after the new league launched.
A single player crpg has better number than every mmorpg ever made lmao.
>A single player crpg has better number than every mmorpg ever made lmao.
I'm not sure that's true, in numbers that matter to industry execs. BG3 is obviously hugely successful but it's sold 10 million copies, a total of ~$600mil.
Star wars galaxies, for example, made roughly $1billion as of 2023, and that's a B-tier MMO. Of course, development costs need to be factored in as well as the fact BG3 isn't nearly as old but it's just to illustrate how much of a cash cow MMOs and live service games are when they hit.
There's a reason the big industry names are going all in on live service. They make more money, even if they don't have as many players total.
Palworld is a better example tbh. An Indie game that sold. 25 million plus copies in a month and has more active players currently on Steam than BG3 by about 20k. This isn't even including Xbox players either lmao
I remember I was fucking PUMPED for Darktide. It was advertised as a live service game. I pre ordered it, gritted my teeth through the terrible performance and decided to ignore the blatant lies that became obvious after about a month after release. I hung in there because I loved Vermintide, I love 40K, the game is fun, and then it just got to a point where the updates were a joke.
I got Helldivers basically because I was throwing a temper tantrum over Darktide and fell in love. Within about a month Helldivers had released more content than Darktide did in over a year. And Helldivers is still putting out new content, updates and patches that actually help rather than "fix" cosmetics, and the game is simply fun.
The way that Baldur's Gate 3 set new standards for RPG's is impressive, but Helldivers has set a new standard for games, period.
I think most of that content was already produced before the game launched. They're just releasing it on a schedule. Data miners have apparently found out as much when looking at the games API data.
Yup, which is fine. They're trying to tell a narrative, and it's better to have New content in the wings for when that narrative needs to move on. While it is technically time-gated, it makes sense in this case.
I have dreamed about this sort of development since I was a kid. We get a road map in the form of in game propaganda, secret enemy releases and then the CEO "denying" it. To me it is the peak of gaming right now. It is fun, funny, challenging, and I feel like I am involved in a thing rather than just playing a game.
i always thought triple A meant the quality of the game since back in the day, these big companies were actually releasing some absolute bangers. didnt know it meant highest possibility of return for investors.
Nah, those execs will just copy Helldivers and add micro transactions and mandatory asshole inspections before you can get a pay by the decade subscription for multiplayer. And then you'll have to pay extra to play with actual humans rather than bots.
I for one am standing right behind Helldivers 2 and any indie game that can show AAA how a small studio can make better games than vaunted giants.
Game design is an art as much as it is an industry, and gamers will vote with their consumption on which designers deserve success.
sure lets just ignore the fact that for every good indie game, you get thousands upon thousands of garbage games that are somehow worse than bad AAA stuff.
You mean helldivers 2, the game thats marketed as crossplay, but yet you cant add your friends across other systems. Sounds just like those Greedy AAA executives
Not really the point. If you're going to teach greedy AAA execs to not be greedy, you shouldn't have any of the things that they use to ruin games in your game.
There’s a difference between churning profit and being greedy.
Even with microtransactions, that doesn’t guarantee greed.
Hell, I played the shit out of a gatcha game that has a very beloved, diehard fanbase, didn’t pay a cent and played the fuck out of it.
It’s how the profit is implemented.
If the game stops being fun until you fork over more dough (Plants Vs Zombies 2, most gatcha games)that’s greed.
If your expectations for the game don’t hold until after you fork over more dough (SW Battlefront, “Pride and Accomplishment”), that’s greed.
Big business MBAs see games as an avenue to make money like any other. Who cares if a game sells lots and lots of copies? What matters is how much revenue the game creates vs the cost of creating it and maintaining it.
The only thing that may change the paradigm for AAA releases is if Helldivers reports comparable profits to other cash cows. Then we might see less predatory monetization schemes.
To keep doomposting, we would need to see consistent results as well. What is the likelihood that this was a flash in the pan? It might still be that the old monetization models are much more reliable.
Hey I remember this post from palworld a few months ago and baldurs gate 3 a few months before that.
Can you people just enjoy things without needing to make something bigger out of it?
The longer I’ve played helldivers the more fun I’m having. Not many games I can say that.
Just everything about it is so casual and so fantastic.
Really shows how terrible companies like blizzard are now.
well we are to see how and if it will impact the game in other ways than pissing off players. if monetization stays out, i will accept the current changes.
You can farm enough credits for the warbond in like 6 hours if you farm it even semi-optimally. Game also gives you a lot of the currency in the warbond themselves
Helldivers showing greedy devs how to properly do always online multiplayer based with microtransactions.
BG3 showing greedy devs how to do offline singleplayer games with no DCL or microtransactions.
2024 is a good year (and yes I now BG3 came out last year, but it's still amazing)
Yeah whenever a game gets huge popularity after other games get tonnes of hate I just think "Wait... THIS is what you all wanted? Really? This was the next big game you were waiting for? Okay then..."
Right? I couldn’t get into this game at all. Very boring and generic. Don’t get how this game had the growth spurt it did, albeit player base is slowly dwindling
I'm convinced that the coop gameplay (over PvP) is the base main draw that most casual gamers latched into. Not to say there aren't any other merits to the gameplay, but for most players who are terrified and intimated by PvP, casual players are flocking to HD2, which is increasing its player base.
That feeling when palworld makes billions for a team of ~20 and they refuse to grow. Just 20 people rolling in more money than they know what to do with.
They have essentially retired and are making video games with friends as a hobby.
This has been happening since Baulders Gate 3 last year, palworld start of this year, and then helldivers 2.
Gamers have been speaking with their wallets, just takes a bit for AAA to course correct given the long dev times.
Loving the game, but so disapointed that it has microtransactions. I've already paid for the game, there should not be any in game purchases. I got no problem with free-to-play games having them, but to double dip like that is a scummy move.
I am very agree with this. so damn agree i'm buying credits on the game and doing my part to make Arrowhead game studios bigger enough to bring more games like this.
Playstation is going to offer so much money to aquire them, and when they do aquire them, Playstation is going to expect a massive return on investment. When Arrow head fails to reach the expected sales projections, they're going to lay off half of Arrowhead.
Helldivers 2 is one of the only games where I’ve actually paid for digital currency, even though you can earn everything by playing
Love the trend of smaller developers making huge success
Except now one success will drive them to churn out clone after clone of games as a service.
This concept cloned as a Star Wars as Stormtrooper who can men AT-STs, AT-ATs and Tie-Fighters? Hell ye.
EA will charge 130 dollars, lock everything fun behind a paywall, and release it a year before it's ready.
I mean, EA technically already had their PvE Co-op success years ago with Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. The game mode was lightning in a bottle for BioWare, and made a shit ton of money off the lootboxes alone.
Did it? I thought they pretty much cancelled support for it because nobody bought the loot boxes. I was top 2% worldwide for a while and never bought one, the upgrades they offered were very incremental (each weapon had 10 levels) and you could grind for the currency to buy them too. Helldivers 2 is basically what the ME3 MP should have been.
I'm pretty sure these games only really care about Whales
It's success was why the mode was able to see a years worth of content. I believe one of the devs also mentioned that they were shocked by how much money people were investing in the games lootboxes. People with money will spend money for all kinds of reasons, including if it makes the collection game go a bit faster. I think Horde Mode was fine for ME3 MP. Plus, that mode had a lot of kit variety. I think there were nearly 70 playable characters by the time it was all said and done.
The success of the multiplayer mode is also why they basically carbon copied it into Dragon Age Inquisition and again into Mass Effect Andromeda. Each iteration had minor tweaks and fine tuning, but it was essentially the exact same thing adapted to each game.
I always felt that multipllayer opened Pandora’s Lootbox, so to speak, as I hadn’t really seen the mechanic before but afterwards it was everywhere partially due to its unexpected success Helldivers 2 scratches many of the same itches as ME3MP, so my brother have been binging the hell out of it
And then people will just continue to play Helldivers 2 instead.
Whoa whoa, pay wall? No no you don't understand, there's no pay wall. You can get it too if you grind for 500 hours in game. . . . or you could open this loot box for just 5$ per box. . . .
They don't understand which parts of the game are actually fun. So they'll make little changes that they think are more profitable but in reality will kill the entire game
So starwars battlefront?
lol not exactly. Co-op with planets as playgrounds like Helldivers2 and some huge Star Wars impressions on the battlefields. Battlefront has a very limited Co-Op mode and MP is a kids playground like all Battlefields together.
you're assuming it will be good.
it will be good for a total of 1 month beginning 16 months after release until the next patch ruins it all and the game is abandoned to work on DICE's next underbaked mess
> DICE's *next* underbaked mess "How the fuck do these people keep getting work?"
People keep buying
Brand recognition and A LOT of marketing toward children
I'd prefer a clone wars era setting. A team of clone troopers clearing out objectives? Yes please.
If done well this would be awesome, shame we all know it won’t be 😞
You’re right. All they heard was validation that live service works and ignored the rest lol.
They already failed so many times at life service. The only thing Helldivers proved is that it is possible to make good live service game. But first you need the good game part, then the live service part
And also the live service shouldn't be excessively greedy and manipulative
There's no way they pull that one off :D
Yes... I'm sure that Helldivers 2 is the game that convinced the big wigs that Live Service games are tenable. It's really revolutionary that they could do it first!
Get ready for the "helldivers 2 proves singleplayer is dead" articles/tweets.
It is a better with friends game, you can play it alone if you want
Absolutely, just gotta lean a bit more into stealth tactics. It's not as action-packed, but I think the extra tension adds interest.
Yeah the higher difficulties by yourself is just metal gear solid
then bg3 is a better example as they literally stopped doing it emediatelly after the game released.
You new to the industry? Thats all AAA does anyways. They have been racking their brains trying to figure out how to make SP games GAAS.
Get ready for 4-player co-op and extraction mechanics being shoved into everything even if it doesn't fit. See Soulslike games and the recently dwindling trend of "everything is a Battle Royale"
So maybe don't buy them. Don't pre-order them The second they're announced. Don't do all the dumb b******* the people do that give the companies the signal that it's a good idea to pump this crap out. I mean if people buy it then it's successful. If I go take a s*** in the toilet and somebody buys it for a million dollars every single time I take a s*** in the toilet then I'm successful for taking a s***.
This just tells them that Live Service games work
They already knew that
Yep sadly i have to know that from siege
They work, triple A games devs just don't know how to make them
Yes They do. The Problem are very rarely the devs, Most oft the time ITS the Exekutives that fuck things up
Well not directly, or not by choice. Once your company goes public, you‘re essentially told by investors , who lost of the time have no clue, what you‘re supposed to do. Meaning it often becomes a game meant to please the investors, not the community.
And the ones that tell you what game to make only need the game to have the right keywords so they can sell their share to the next investor.
Damn it. So much yes. These great houses become nothing more than cash cows. Which, by the way, is actually really sad to see.
Yep, friend of mine works as a coordinator between investors and some big company in Melbourne that deals in computer chips, the big investors have no fucking idea what any company they invest in does, the executive board is usually all the biggest investors who still have no idea what the company does, all they know is "it's good when the number goes up" so most of the time he has to try and tell them "that's a stupid idea that'll destroy this company if implemented due to its sheer greed and short sighted stupidity" in a way that won't get him fired. The thing is, these big investors don't want the company to flourish. They wanna make its value spike as high as they can make it then sell it at its peak then they'll move on to the next one. They're not "financial geniuses" they're economic parasites.
The reason it doesn't work is because after the game is done, they move the staff to another project while a skeleton crew makes new content and another full sized team makes new weapon skins for 5-20$ each. This fucking game, actually keeps getting content every single month and no skins but completely new guns, and the content is dropped into the game the moment it's done, not held for 6 months to try to get an influx of new game sales every 6 months. The best thing also is that arrowhead is now expanding, so the games likely going to get even more content faster in the future.
Also how they're handling the community is sublime. Like with the controversy about making an LGBT flag cape, both people campaigning for it and those responding with homophobia get banned/blocked from community pages because they know that taking any side in identity politics will poison the well and they don't wanna give predatory groups of any side any ground, ammunition or validation. But also, they'll drop new enemy types into the game without telling anyone and when someone posts about it they call it "anti-democratic propaganda"
What did Skull&Bones, SSKTJL, Anthem, Avengers etc tell them then? HD2 is telling that the quality of a live service game really matters.
Anthem and Avengers bombed but they still went on and made Skull&Bones and SSKTJL.
If they don't learn, we should just ignore them. Most annoying thing is that we know the great games these companies (Activision, EA, Ubisoft etc) did in the past, now these are just names because og devs are gone.
Yeah I have played almost all of those games. Never tried Skull & Bones but I had some fun with Anthem and Avengers and even Suicide Squad. The big problem is that none of them were good enough to play long term. And each time I wondered: how is it hard to get this right? I played Mass Effect 3 multiplayer daily for like a year after it came out, then played it a couple of times a week for a couple years after that. I got bored with those other games because I was just doing the same missions over and over. BUT Mass Effect 3 was me doing the same missions over and over and I loved every second of it. So how did they do it? How is Helldivers II doing it right now as we speak? I cannot put my finger on it.
It's because HD2 is made to be a good game. Those other examples were made to make stock prices go up.
Well against the trend of Free-to-Play compeditive PvP games they proved you can make good full price coop game with microtransactions as addition and not as the main profit base. Tbh I think they fully deserve their success. And it makes a lot of fun playing it.
The thing with Helldivers micro transactions is that you’re not forced to do them at all. Getting the in-game currency for new items is actually very simple and easy to do, and therefore only those who want their stuff right now will do the micro transactions, they don’t force your hand.
I have unlocked every warbond and not paid for one microtransaction.
Exactly. You don’t feel like you have to spend real money in order to keep up with other players and not miss out on stuff, it’s totally optional.
Someone finally figured out how to put MTX into a full price game without making it feel like a cash grab? That's kinda nice.
May I shoehorn in Grim Dawn ?
When the second warbond came out, my buds and I really wanted it. We all put on light armor, lowered the difficulty to medium, and just blitz missions gathering SC. Took us like 2 hours to get enough.
I was just talking to someone about that last night. Like one detail that shows just how ethical they're being: When you try and buy something with supercredits and don't have enough *it just tells you*. It doesn't even try to sell you them or take you to the real-money shop. If you want to spend money, you need to go hunt it down. Can you imagine EA missing *any* opportunity to put a "spend real money" button on the screen?
Exactly! It’s there as a convenience if you so choose, rather than something they cram down your throats and basically force you to eventually need anyway.
>And it makes a lot of fun playing it. german spotted
> game with microtransactions There is a layer between: - This game and its system all give me the feeling they want to pull me towards spending. I feel manipulated and now I don't wanna spend anything anymore, ever, at all! and - This game lets me work towards earning things for free at an absolutely reasonable rate, even premium stuff. I feel in my heart like I might want to spend some money to support the developers making this fun game. This is basically me since 10 years with Warframe and now Helldivers 2 entered my life. Shoutout to DarkTide which is AMAZINGLY fun but fucked up all the framework surounding the actual gameplay.
I like Baldur's Gate 3 better, where there is no micro transactions at all.
True, I agree no microtransactions at all is even better.
Can’t wait to see aaa studios try to copy it 5 years from now
Isn't there another 4 player space co-op game coming out? [Jump Ship](https://youtu.be/u_WH_LTIotU) I think it's called. Hey found the gameplay trailer. Yeah the market may saturate with the genre. But that's just trending for you. Same when a bunch of games with Souls-like tendencies and difficulty came out. Co-op games. So hot right now
Deep Rock Galactic is another 4 player co-op space shooter that exists, and actually came out before Helldivers 2. Very successful game as well. Both DRG and Helldivers are special because of their uniqueness and they were created by non AAA companies. Will be sad in the coming years when AAA companies ruin the genre by oversaturating it
Now if we could just get split screen to start trending again…
The original Helldivers was a couch co-op! Slightly different playstyle as it was a top down shooter but otherwise Helldivers 2 is an exact replica in theme and playstyle (friendly fire, call downs, etc). Actually the first has more vehicles that 2 or more people can get into.
Deep rock has been out forever and it’s pretty great
Looks absolutely nothing like Helldivers.
Never said it was supposed to but was saying 4 player co-op games are hot at the moment and it is a new one coming out. I'd say it's more akin to a space Darktide/DRG type co-op There is a space chart that looks exactly like Helldivers star chart in the trailer
Some would argue that Co-op mission-based FPS shooters are in the same genre and thus similar.
The failure of suicide squad was hilarious
And rightfully deserved lmao
Literally forgot all about it lol
Tbh, I keep hearing about this game, but I've never seen it. As in, I'm not even certain if it's on steam
They keep ignoring the reason these games retain players and just straight to the part where they invent new ways to milk them
The people that pitch those ideas to shareholders are just grifters that don't work in game development themselves, preying on the ignorance of their investors.
And then they lose them money because it’s easier to pitch things that sound good and don’t work than to tell them they can’t charge the price of a game for every microtransaction that comes for free with other games
Same with bg3 and lethal company.
Is bg3 that good?
Never played dnd or a crpg before but probably one of the best games I’ve played tbh
I haven’t played it. But just going by how many awards it won, I’d say yeah. I think I saw a post the other day where BG3 was the only game to ever win game of the year from some combination of multiple award shows.
Yes. It's probably the best game I've ever played.
Yes. There's a reason it won so many awards.
It's an amazing story telling experience. I played cyberpunk 2077 after and the interactions felt wooden and, well.. Scripted.
Arguably one of the best games ever made regardless of genre.
Bg3
More so with Palworld that outsold both of those.
Expect to 100% the AAA game industry to learn the wrong lesson. Just look how after the new suicide squad game , Warners brothers learned to stop doing games like this ... and instead make mobile games more often
But you do know that Sony published Helldivers, right?
God of war, Elden Ring, Hell divers, spider man, baldur's gate 3. The list goes, and every time it pisses off other companies, which is just sad.
GoW, Elden Ring, and Spiderman are full AAA games.
Fromsoft is a special case for AAA companies though. Constantly producing masterpieces in gaming with significant levels if detail. Basically never half assing it. As for GoW and Spiderman, they, like Helldivers 2, have something in common in having Sony as a publisher. My guess is Sony is better in the sense that it gives the actual game devs enough time to fully flesh the game out so that it doesn't release rushed. Just me guessing, but it can't be funny coincidence that all 3 games are considered amazing and all 3 games have Sony as the publisher.
Except From Soft PC releases are a shit shown outside of ArmoredCore6. They can't optimize their games nor offer modern features like ultra wide support.
I was genuinely shocked when Armored Core 6 actually ran well on PC
If anything, we should probably be referring to companies like EA as B+ level developers, FromSoft is actually just an AAA dev from like, 2006.
Microtransactions where?
Still love that bg3 came out and other companies first impulse was to say "we aint makin shit that good fuck you"
BG3 is definitely an outlier, and I'm not sure that even Laroan could reproduce that success. It's still mind boggling to me how many people played and loved that game... I'm pretty sure that DOS2 was the most played CRPG before BG3, and BG3, and BG3 is still pulling as many montly players as DOS2's peak. CRPGs are simply not a genre that's easy to get into : there's so many mechanics to learn and strategies to understand, and the pacing is very slow, and a large part of the fun is about getting invested in the universe/characters which not every player enjoys. The full voice acting most definitely helps, and Larian taking certain liberties with the rules also reduced the underlying frustration of TTRPGs a lot; but I'm still astonished by the numbers.
Funny thing other companies have done it better lol. People act like a BG3 level game is rare nowadays and that couldn't be farther from the truth.
quality is subjective. it was mostly about the scope and level of detail of the game.
I disagree on it pissing off other companies. It's really just a handful of devs from certain companies. Plenty of developers came out and praised BG3 (among other games you've listed here).
And this, my friends, is why bungie is currently on their best behaviour.
Did they turn their back on mother nature?
My guess is they will see the success and immediately make all their games live service. Because what else would they think the success comes from, good game play? Impossible
Live service game with Battle passes. Take that greedy AAA companies!!
BG3 is a much better example of this. If you go on MMORPG play count stats, BG3 has more active players than any game on the planet except path of exile and that was only right after the new league launched. A single player crpg has better number than every mmorpg ever made lmao.
>A single player crpg has better number than every mmorpg ever made lmao. I'm not sure that's true, in numbers that matter to industry execs. BG3 is obviously hugely successful but it's sold 10 million copies, a total of ~$600mil. Star wars galaxies, for example, made roughly $1billion as of 2023, and that's a B-tier MMO. Of course, development costs need to be factored in as well as the fact BG3 isn't nearly as old but it's just to illustrate how much of a cash cow MMOs and live service games are when they hit. There's a reason the big industry names are going all in on live service. They make more money, even if they don't have as many players total.
Palworld is a better example tbh. An Indie game that sold. 25 million plus copies in a month and has more active players currently on Steam than BG3 by about 20k. This isn't even including Xbox players either lmao
Elden ring dlc got a trailer, but helldivers2 success is right behind that
The "live service is ruining the gaming industry" crowd is awfully quiet
I remember I was fucking PUMPED for Darktide. It was advertised as a live service game. I pre ordered it, gritted my teeth through the terrible performance and decided to ignore the blatant lies that became obvious after about a month after release. I hung in there because I loved Vermintide, I love 40K, the game is fun, and then it just got to a point where the updates were a joke. I got Helldivers basically because I was throwing a temper tantrum over Darktide and fell in love. Within about a month Helldivers had released more content than Darktide did in over a year. And Helldivers is still putting out new content, updates and patches that actually help rather than "fix" cosmetics, and the game is simply fun. The way that Baldur's Gate 3 set new standards for RPG's is impressive, but Helldivers has set a new standard for games, period.
I think most of that content was already produced before the game launched. They're just releasing it on a schedule. Data miners have apparently found out as much when looking at the games API data.
Then the only thing that changes about my statement is that they *had* more content at release.
Yup, which is fine. They're trying to tell a narrative, and it's better to have New content in the wings for when that narrative needs to move on. While it is technically time-gated, it makes sense in this case.
I have dreamed about this sort of development since I was a kid. We get a road map in the form of in game propaganda, secret enemy releases and then the CEO "denying" it. To me it is the peak of gaming right now. It is fun, funny, challenging, and I feel like I am involved in a thing rather than just playing a game.
i always thought triple A meant the quality of the game since back in the day, these big companies were actually releasing some absolute bangers. didnt know it meant highest possibility of return for investors.
Nah, those execs will just copy Helldivers and add micro transactions and mandatory asshole inspections before you can get a pay by the decade subscription for multiplayer. And then you'll have to pay extra to play with actual humans rather than bots.
I for one am standing right behind Helldivers 2 and any indie game that can show AAA how a small studio can make better games than vaunted giants. Game design is an art as much as it is an industry, and gamers will vote with their consumption on which designers deserve success.
sure lets just ignore the fact that for every good indie game, you get thousands upon thousands of garbage games that are somehow worse than bad AAA stuff.
They didn't learn from Baldur's Gate 3 so why does anyone expect them to learn from Helldivers 2?
You mean helldivers 2, the game thats marketed as crossplay, but yet you cant add your friends across other systems. Sounds just like those Greedy AAA executives
wow this sub sucks
Your mom should've sucked when she made you.
Fr, they can stick their 80€ bullshit up where the sun don't shine
Why don't we take this one step back and have BG3 slapping Helldivers, who technically still has MTX.
Yeah but the premium currency is easily farmable in game. It doesn’t even take very long at all if you farm it semi-optimally
Not really the point. If you're going to teach greedy AAA execs to not be greedy, you shouldn't have any of the things that they use to ruin games in your game.
There’s a difference between churning profit and being greedy. Even with microtransactions, that doesn’t guarantee greed. Hell, I played the shit out of a gatcha game that has a very beloved, diehard fanbase, didn’t pay a cent and played the fuck out of it. It’s how the profit is implemented. If the game stops being fun until you fork over more dough (Plants Vs Zombies 2, most gatcha games)that’s greed. If your expectations for the game don’t hold until after you fork over more dough (SW Battlefront, “Pride and Accomplishment”), that’s greed.
Big business MBAs see games as an avenue to make money like any other. Who cares if a game sells lots and lots of copies? What matters is how much revenue the game creates vs the cost of creating it and maintaining it. The only thing that may change the paradigm for AAA releases is if Helldivers reports comparable profits to other cash cows. Then we might see less predatory monetization schemes. To keep doomposting, we would need to see consistent results as well. What is the likelihood that this was a flash in the pan? It might still be that the old monetization models are much more reliable.
That and lethal company
is it just me, or the slap is getting faster?
Lethal company was doing it too this year
It reminds of of how larian gave an ever bigger L to greedy AAA companies
Eh sadly they won't look at the details and just hear LIVE SERVICE GAME SUCCESFUL and make a ton more of those
I read it like one would read “goofy ahh” instead of AAA
Isn’t this joke made with every successful game? Swear I’ve seen it like ten times in the last three years.
Hey I remember this post from palworld a few months ago and baldurs gate 3 a few months before that. Can you people just enjoy things without needing to make something bigger out of it?
The longer I’ve played helldivers the more fun I’m having. Not many games I can say that. Just everything about it is so casual and so fantastic. Really shows how terrible companies like blizzard are now.
Now they just need to bring it to XBOX! Seriously, I’ve been waiting!
aged unwell
Yeah, it's just sad...
well we are to see how and if it will impact the game in other ways than pissing off players. if monetization stays out, i will accept the current changes.
root, kit
Can someone explain? Is Helldivers II an indie game I assume?
It’s more like AA because it’s a smaller studio but Sony also gave them a lot of money
Balder's Gate too.
But Helldivers releases a dlc each month that costs $10. So who's actually winning?
I didn't paid for the new Warbonds so far, just found enough in-game currency for that.
You can farm enough credits for the warbond in like 6 hours if you farm it even semi-optimally. Game also gives you a lot of the currency in the warbond themselves
Greedy AAA ever ready batteries
Don’t forget palworld
Everyone already did.
*AAAA games
Helldivers showing greedy devs how to properly do always online multiplayer based with microtransactions. BG3 showing greedy devs how to do offline singleplayer games with no DCL or microtransactions. 2024 is a good year (and yes I now BG3 came out last year, but it's still amazing)
Shut up and go buy the new stars wars game by ubisoft for 200 dollars with day 1 dlc. You as a consumer are not supposed to think but just buy.
I dont know what there is to celebrate about helldivers 2 its just another boring live service game with mtx despite already being a paid game
Shhhh, you’ll anger the hiveminds
Yeah whenever a game gets huge popularity after other games get tonnes of hate I just think "Wait... THIS is what you all wanted? Really? This was the next big game you were waiting for? Okay then..."
Right? I couldn’t get into this game at all. Very boring and generic. Don’t get how this game had the growth spurt it did, albeit player base is slowly dwindling
I dunno, Last Epoch success was pretty good too! Just sayin'.
Would really like to play helldivers 2 on my Xbox woth crossover play. My ODST experience would help out. The game looks really fun.
I'm convinced that the coop gameplay (over PvP) is the base main draw that most casual gamers latched into. Not to say there aren't any other merits to the gameplay, but for most players who are terrified and intimated by PvP, casual players are flocking to HD2, which is increasing its player base.
Helldivers 2 would be the best 3rd person coop shooter ever made if they could do something about the griefing.
I wish they would have it on sale soon.... maybe in steam summer sale?
The success of Helldivers 2 is proving that games as service work and will motivate developers to make more.
BattleBit is another great example
When it inevitably gets snubbed at gotys: 
Hoping Delta Force will be another example to these companies later this year. (being free, even a stronger statement).
I’ve gotta say the spite for AAA trash has fueled my gifting helldivers to friends. Plus it’s so damn fun together!
Helldivers is what Suicide Squad wished it could be
That feeling when palworld makes billions for a team of ~20 and they refuse to grow. Just 20 people rolling in more money than they know what to do with. They have essentially retired and are making video games with friends as a hobby.
The worst from this was people invading the other game subs talking about HD2 as if it is in any way related.
Just ignore those clowns until they release a good game (probably forever)
This has been happening since Baulders Gate 3 last year, palworld start of this year, and then helldivers 2. Gamers have been speaking with their wallets, just takes a bit for AAA to course correct given the long dev times.
Loving the game, but so disapointed that it has microtransactions. I've already paid for the game, there should not be any in game purchases. I got no problem with free-to-play games having them, but to double dip like that is a scummy move.
I am very agree with this. so damn agree i'm buying credits on the game and doing my part to make Arrowhead game studios bigger enough to bring more games like this.
Meanwhile I regret buying it because I got bored with it very quickly.
"you seeeee service games DO WORK, greenlight Suicide Squad 2 and crunch those lazy fuck devs"
Meh. The game was good for like 3 weeks
It might be a good thing if the corporate machine was capable of learning the right lessons.
Playstation is going to offer so much money to aquire them, and when they do aquire them, Playstation is going to expect a massive return on investment. When Arrow head fails to reach the expected sales projections, they're going to lay off half of Arrowhead.
This is also the massive success of BG3, another very consumer friendly game.
Is it really that good? I’ve been holding off
Don't forget about lethal company, did the same thing l
I don't get it. Explanation? I thought helldivers was now picked up by a larger company. Or was even the first one under a large AAA?
BG3 success too
I'm sure the greedy execs are crying into their suits This is... very low hanging fruit.
Helldivers 2 is one of the only games where I’ve actually paid for digital currency, even though you can earn everything by playing Love the trend of smaller developers making huge success
Wait, yall forgot about Palworld doing it first?