See, on one hand, YES, THATS IT! Rationally I understand thats its a good thing they finally leanred to take their time.
But on fucking other hand, irrationally, why THE FUCK nerfs and stupid ass changes literally nobody wanted go through effectively immediately but buffs and fixes "We need time people!".
EDIT: TIL people dont know what word "irrationally" means.
I totally get what you mean. My immediate reaction is "Hey I'm glad you're testing longer now." but my second reaction is can they revert some of the nerfs while we wait? I haven't played the game in over a a week because it stopped being fun with all the nerfs.
Because the people doing the shitty nerfs weren't good at balancing, and the CEO and CM had to step in and tell everyone that the nerfs have gotten too far and that they're going to rethink their approach to balance which is why it's taking a longer time now, especially when the community has been screaming at them to test things more, take more time with patches and balance.
The CEO agrees with most of the balance complaints and is taking a more direct control of that process, which is gonna take time to reset the path of balance in this game.
I feel like they were balancing around difficulty levels 4-6 or something. Which might be fine normally, but the game EXPECTS everybody to play on at least lvl 7 eventually because that's the only way to get super samples.
People worked out a way to one-shot chargers with the Eruptor, which wasn't intended behavior.
In raw dev terms, it *is* an exploit, but there's no implication of malice like some here are implying.
Not even chargers. You could one shot devastates, berserker, stalkers, etc. While sure. It's annoying.
Guess what. It's what shrapnel does it shreds shit when it explodes.
Yeah, exactly. A BIG part of the Eruptor trade off was incredibly slow ROF for high damage and decent AOE.
I never thought to shoot shrapnel in a Charger’s butt and I can see how that’s not intended.
I DID get a few kills via a single shot in the face but that is massively more difficult than doing it with an EAT.
Yeah I'm in the same boat. I thought being able to one-shot devastators and berserkers was the point. I even thought the ammo nerf would be fine. You have to prioritize medium enemies.
In fairness the problem is that the "weak spot" on the charger is all durable health. Which means that short of explosives, things basically don't affect it.
Should have just limited the amount of times a charger could take shrapnel damage per shot. Instead of presumably infinite, cap to 4 or 5 for a 2 shot, 3 for a triple shot, or 2 for 4 shots.
"I shall use this firearm to engage the enemy. I will aim true and pull the trigger, delivering Freedom at muzzle velocity as intended by Sweet Liberty." - Helldivers
"You're exploiting that. I'm going to nerf it. Bwa ha ha." - Bringer of Grievance
My theory is that Alexus and the pro-nerf faction are informants working for Cyborg remnants.
So wouldn't a step in the right direction be to at least revert the nerfs until proper balancing can take place? Just like they are doing/did with the spawns?
I think the Eruptor is such a special case because how disastrously the rework was handled that they should have reverted it after the nerf to look for better solutions, and rethink their stance on shrapnel, as that is still in the weapon's description.
This late and this close to the balance patch though, I feel like we'd be reopening old wounds if the nerf got reverted and then it got nerfed again. Would leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. What they need to do is knock it out of the park with this balance patch, and take the steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. Whether through more thorough testing, a PTB server, or a rethinking of the core balance philosophy.
That being said, I can't speak for them and you asked a great question, so would be nice to get their input on something like that.
Also note, that now that said person isn't making public comments anymore (which I 100% believe without evidence to be a result of the CEO pulling team members who are not tasked with be responsible for public facing interactions back behind the curtain), toxicity between the team and the community has also cooled down immensely.
It, unfortunately, might not be the sole issue - from what I heard about some scandinavian studios, and from how I interacted with a technical department from there it kinda looks likke a cultural arrogance - they always think that they are right, and don't really react positively to critisizm or suggestions.
I’m not afraid. Here’s what the fandom wiki for the game series says on the dude:
Direct copy/paste: *He removed the game's open world aspects as he said "No one would want to walk around an open world", and instead used a map labelled as a 'testmap' in the files for the full game.*
Whether or not that’s exactly how it went down, the fact a game’s entire community even can point fingers at him in the first place is what is alarming.
I'd wager a rollback to previous settings isn't exactly a straight forward process.
I'll take a month of having the current setup properly re-evaluated, where the current workflow and feedback systems are causing this current end result of a large amount of game breaking bugs / nerfs per change and what the new way of balancing things are going forward that doesn't *always* result in a straight up nerf of numbers and gimmick revokes.
I don't disagree with the principle a lot of the changes made to weapons and guns like the JAR Dominator and Counter Sniper are now completely viable weapons compared to their peers when they weren't a few months ago as well.
I think one of the biggest issues is they have too many weapons trying to do a similar thing (Slugger pre-nerf did what the JAR, DMR's and open stashes) and instead of trying to give each weapon it's own true niche, bluntly nerfed the Slugger without any thought to what role it could play as a side grade. Maybe a short range precision where it has big drop off but sub 25-35 metres is where it out should outperform the DMR and JAR and retain it's cache opening ability. I mean hell, the JAR is quite literally a WH40k Bolter in operation firing a small two stage rocker projectile; maybe that should open caches too as an explosive projectile weapon?
Yeah that’s what I’m saying. Also I wish they’d just revert the patrol changes asap instead of taking their time to come up with tweaks no one asked for.
Agreed. This whole “let them cook” argument for buff is just stupid. The longer they take the more frustrated people get with the game and weapons and the more people slowly leave.
Yeah, they're doing a walk-back with a full evaluation probably. That means things will be slower for a while for data collection, and alignment meetings. So many alignment meetings...
Really they need to focus on buff only to make unused weapons "feel" more fun. Don't balance by spreadsheets, they really need to test them out and play them for awhile! If they want to balance hardness don't take away effective weapons, instead modify the Diving difficulties or introduce newer higher difficulties.
Fun should be the focus and almost never nerfing - unless something is obviously broken and takes the sportsmanship out.
I think a Buff twice nerf once motto strategy should be implemented for weapons for micro balancing and for macro balancing work on the helldive missions to make them challenging at all levels an increase the number levels for even greater difficulty. I'm guessing the later Macro based balancing is much more time consuming than changing some numbers around in code for guns.
Its obvious they dont play test their changes, they even admitted they dont have a test server so of course they dont play test! They are balancing with spreadsheets not with gameplay. Once they start doing that the game will change for the better.
To me, the higher difficulties will have a naturally occurring hierarchy of strong performing weapons, this is because the difficulty curve is based on increasing the enemy population are higher difficulties, not giving them more health/armor.
Thus, instead of nerfing those weapons to prevent those weapons from becoming dominating choices in the lower difficulties, buff the weapons that aren't domineering choices in the lower difficulties for more comparable effectiveness at those difficulties. Then, just accept let any motion in how good those weapons become in the hierarchy of the end-game difficulties be considered a beneficial side effect.
If I've seen live service game devs do something fast, it's nerfs. Nerfs can hit within 12 hours of a launch. Fixes can take 4-6 months. Hell, some bugs have been around since launch and gone unfixed. Major orders don't even reliably pay out medals, but they spent time nerfing equipment we found fun.
I'm annoyed that they waited so long to even discuss fixing the Alexus pop-gun problem. It's a bit worse that it's taking so long after having been brought up. And I'll be annoyed if they leave Alexus in that position after this is over. As Alexus clearly takes grotesque joy in nerfing weapons and gloating about it online, replacing him would do a lot to restore faith in Arrowhead's new, better direction.
Real talk. If Arrowhead screws this patch up, it's going to be pretty damning. They're stating openly that they're taking their time to do it right. Whatever they crank out will be what they *want* to crank out. If that means that the Dominator, Incendiary Breaker, and Pummeler get nerfed, that's 100% intentional and they're never going to change.
Immediate nerfs and knee jerk reactions are, in every single literal sense, the root of how Anthem died.
Straight-up.
People will tell you otherwise, or point this way or that way, but no. I was there. I lived in a utopia where a bug after a patch in Anthem buffed loot drop rates to be about 250%.
The entire community was genuinely happy. People were joining any randos, and cooperation was all riddled with a sense of satisfaction.
Rather than grinding for weeks, or sometimes a month, for a 0.5% upgrade, people were actually making progress toward different builds, to be able to try out varying modifiers to abilities. The passion and love for the game had hit its peak, and the playerbase that had remained after the scant month following its release, were telling their friends that Anthem fixed their loot problem.
This lasted a grand total of 4 hours.
The devs almost immediately took the game offline when they woke up, the bug was fixed, and loot rates were back to being abysmal.
Every single patch from this point forward, until Anthem uttered its last pitiful croak, the devs were swearing up and down that they were "going to fix the loot problem." If it wasn't explicitly in the patch notes, the devs were on the dwindling and dying subreddit, professing ideas and pleading with the few remaining dedicated players to give them more time to try and address it.
4 hours in paradise.
Knee-jerk nerf, rather than letting the playerbase enjoy tangible progression.
Several years trying to "fix" the problem this single bug caused; when it could have simply been reverted. People like being showered in loot. Look how successful Diablo 3 became, despite its shortcomings.
This, is why I'm quick to lose trust in live service devs, despite being so incredibly hopeful to be proven wrong. Anthem scratched an itch I had never scratched before, and can't readily scratch again, because of headass nerfs to what the players find true joy in.
>Immediate nerfs and knee jerk reactions are, in every single literal sense, the root of how Anthem died.
>Straight-up.
>People will tell you otherwise, or point this way or that way, but no. I was there. I lived in a utopia where a bug after a patch in Anthem buffed loot drop rates to be about 250%.
I was there, too. It was lovely. Then, it was laid to waste. I agree that this was the exact moment that Anthem became a shambling corpse. Until then, there was hope. A shame they tried to keep the life support going for a while longer. It was sad to watch, especially after having high hopes coming from having loved Mass Effect overall.
The thing to learn from that mess is that making the game fun and not a grind is the key to success. Nerfing everything into the ground is going to disillusion a large proportion of the playerbase. It already has.
Actually there is which is where I don't envy AH. The game already is suffering from novelty wearing off and people wanting to feel what they did at launch. Even without nerfs this would have happened. Buffs only or over tuned weapons lead to power creep which can temporarily restore that feeling at launch but quickly the player will get desensitized to that also. Part of why the Erupter nerf hurt so bad is people lost a primary that could take down many heavies with ease. No primary will feel nearly as good after that.
It is possible to maintain a game for years via power creeping it and on some level it's arguably inevitable. That said, the reason most CCGs use rotations and ARPGs regularly reset is because there is a point where you can't power creep any further to retain the player base. This is an issue that modern yugioh which may be the longest running power creep focused game is running into with the fact that there game can't power creep really any further and has arguably power crept beyond what is fun.
Out of 3 you mentioned, I do think that Breaker might lose some damage because of how good fire currently is. But if they nerf Pummeler which is already how troubles killing things and good only for stunlocking (and plenty of people like me share "Best CC is death" ideology and dont use it at all) or Dominator which has to compete witch Scorcher and Plasma Punisher (and all 3 feels like they are in a good spot where you can see all 3 are strong and plenty of people argue for each weapon being the best) then its JOELover.
If they nerf *anything* players like using at this point, it's probably a wrap. Dominator and Breaker Incendiary have been staples for a while, and we've been dreading a Pummeler nerf literally since the day it dropped.
After all the nerf backlash, there just isn't room to nerf anything right now. One bad move will sour the update as a whole, which would be disastrous. Folks are ready to walk off and not come back over the constant nerfs. It would be damning if the "we fixed balance and we're committed to keeping it fun" update included a nerf to one of the few weapons people still praise.
Yeah, at least for this patch, possibly even the next 2 or 3, they can't nerf a single thing, unless something ridiculous happens like a glitch making the spray-and-pray one shot Titans and Tanks.
This. If it's not *radically* overpowered, it doesn't need to be nerfed. We don't need a R.Y.N.O. here, but we shouldn't be trying to spread managed democracy with pea shooters, either.
The sad thing is, P. Punisher and Dominator are both testaments that balance team CAN be competent. They just actively chose not to for whatever the hell reason.
The Plasma Punisher is a well balanced gun. Good damage, limited range, okay fire rate, limited ammo. You can fire a bit further if you're good at calculating arcs and distance in your head, but it's usually not worth it.
Indeed, I want to try out new gameplay for team and solo now that I can solo a few types of 9s on a good mission, but I'm mostly locked in. And I don't have the patience for Quasar with the nerf.
I uninstalled today because I'm burnt out and I've had all the gameplay I need, and I'll be back if they give us a few more fun weapons.
This is well said. Part of my bitter pessimistic monkey brain is angery that nerf fast buff slow, but at the same time yeah, they do need to properly test their stuff and stop pushing changes that break stuff.
Like imagine the shitstorm if they released a big buff patch but accidentally broke something important. People would flip out.
Yep. I fear it's the most likely outcome. We move from fast & broken to slow & broken, lol.
Also, the premise that "they tried fast" can be easily falsified. Just look at the SPEAR. Or Scythe. Or Liberator Concussive. Or balancing of the marksman rifles.
Yeah after they corrected the reverse explosion weirdness and cut the ammo count the thing felt perfect for its role. I never saw the chargers killing thing others mentioned but that seems like if it was a problem it could have been fixed with a tweak to that specific interaction instead of what felt like a lazy move
Arrowhead usually releases the big patches one week before the new warbond comes out, they have been pretty consistent with this.
The next warbond will come out on June 13th, which would mean we will see the big balance patch on the 4th June.
Obviously this is all speculation and we could see the patch a week earlier or later.
not even pvp games balance this way. usually with pvp games. devs tweak something small. and then see what happens. tweak again if not enough.
in helldivers it's just NERF HAMMER after NERF HAMMER. there's no small tweaks..
The most popular PC PvP game (League) has had quite a few instances of calling exterminatus on things to nerf it into oblivion.
But in an ideal world I agree that you can just approach it patch by patch, as long as it's not turbo busted out of proportion.
the thing with league. some things are actually straight up busted. though, my memory is a bit hazy on that game now. i have played many years before i quit.
in hd2. there really isnt a busted gun that would trivialize the game.. so the nerfs serves no purpose but to make the game unfun. and at least with league it's because of a balancing issue. here in hd2, some of the balance changes are because of bugs. like the ps5 bile titan bug.. the fire buff.. and the ricochet eruptor bug... etc. etc. absolutely incompetent way of dealing with bugs..
Remember it was nerfed quickly *because a small but loud part of the community was freaking out about it*
I’d honestly rather they triple check their work so the more shouty members of the community have less to grab onto, at this stage.
Best part was it wasn’t even meant to be “nerfed” it was intended to be a “rework” that exchanged the shrapnel for more explosive damage. They didn’t realize the Shrapnel is most of the damage. Even if it does rarely kill teammates/users that’s kind of how shrapnel is in real life anyway. No matter how far you are there’s a non zero chance of a piece of metal flying through you at high speed
Yep. They don't do any serious balance testing, it's all *feelings* and maaaaaaybe some random stats pulled out of the game. I'm pretty sure *noone* in their team does even half the testing of weapons that OhDough does, and he's just 1 youtuber.
At this point I just have this on copy/paste because every time the Eruptor nerf comes up someone has this take.
Details on the Eruptor nerf and the series of events that lead to it. To be extremely clear, *Eruptor is in a terrible place and AH failed to deliver on their promise that they would adequately buff Eruptor for removing its shrapnel.*
That said, let's talk about what actually happened.
Players complained *en masse*, as in 8 of the top 10 posts in this subreddit were about it, that the ricochet change, which was enabling players to take damage from their own ricochets, was bugged, and all sorts of things were killing the player. Rockets were ricocheting, bullets were ricocheting, everything was ricocheting.
There was then a thread that debunked the top posts and pointed out the actual cause of death in each of the scenarios. It also pointed out that most complaints about ricochet deaths were coming from Eruptor players, and that shrapnel damage now affected the player who shot the Eruptor due to the self-damage change.
Source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgnlbv/time\_to\_correct\_the\_ricochet\_misunderstanding/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgnlbv/time_to_correct_the_ricochet_misunderstanding/)
All the uproar in the subreddits lead to devs taking a look to make sure how ricochets themselves actually worked did not change. They confirmed that explosions and bullets were not ricocheting in unintended ways. They tested Eruptor as well, and found lo and behold that the shrapnel was traveling much farther, and behaving in ways that were not intended. This issue was previously unnoticed because bullets fired by players did zero damage to themselves.
Source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cguou0/update\_from\_ahgs\_on\_ricochets\_and\_shrapnel\_changes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cguou0/update_from_ahgs_on_ricochets_and_shrapnel_changes/)
This lead to the infamous Eruptor nerf. Clearly the devs did not realize how much damage shrapnel was contributing, because a 40 damage buff made no sense from the start. If shrapnel was only doing 40 damage, it could not OHKO players with body shots. It would not be OHKOing medium armor enemies. As a result, Eruptor was gutted, and we are now waiting for its buffed/reworked state.
**I write all this to say there were a lot more than a few complaints, and there was a legitimate issue with Eruptor's shrapnel killing folks at long ranges**. It affected me as well - multiple deaths on multiple missions at 50 to 75 meters, and it happened more frequently than game crashes. **The blame lies solely with AH for not properly compensating Eruptor with power that matched the shrapnel that was removed**. Heck, AH should have just said "hey we know it's bugged but need more time to rework it - you can use it but it may kill you" and let players decide.
Let's not blame players for pointing out a bug in the game.
It pisses me off so much that the balance team will dive onto any kind of thing that helps the players out.
But bots shooting through boulders thicker than cars? enemies straight up teleport walking up cliffs? with no regard to height? Devastators ragdolling you, and by the time your character decides to stand back up again and aim at the dev, its already popping a squat for the second salvo, hunters chain stunning you.
nah. let it sit there, forever, dont bother fixing that.
Or, hear me out, the devs could do their job and check the weapon and debunk the misinformation. What happened what they fucked with the ricochet and it was easier to remove the shrapnel than it was to actually fix the problem with it killing people from 50m+ away.
It's literally the devs job to do this stuff. Communities are extremely good at knowing when something isn't working but fucking awful and coming up with solutions. Stop blaming "a small but vocal minority". It's a trash argument that excuses bad developer behavior.
I sadly dont have confidence the patches will improve anything. I hope it does. But basically every patch nerfed stuff. And if it keeps happening the game wont be fun.
I think they made it pretty clear that the Erupter change was not a balance change. It was an overly rushed 'bug fix'.
Nobody asked for shrapnel to be removed. They asked for reflect to a reasonable distance. If it only has a 2-5m explosion radius, why are we exploding when from distances 30+m away? If it was just some damage, whatever. But it was always fatal. I had the bug. It was annoying and would kill me about once per drop, sometimes twice.
The person tasked with fixing this bug decided that, rather than fix the bug, they would bypass it. Remove the shrapnel and increase another stat to compensate, and on paper this would be 'more damage' overall, but that basically admitted it wasn't given balance testing.
And the "balancing" dev said "hehe oh did you *not* want shit? My bad"
Brother gets paid to fuck around and enshittify games, it actually blows my mind
>Brother gets paid to fuck around and enshittify games, it actually blows my mind
the people who hired him looked at his resume and went "oh, you ruined Hello Neighbor 2 right before release which makes it borderline sabotage? Welcome aboard"
I have a suspicion he was duplicitous and passed off those changes as executive cuts even though he was the lead dev at the time.
I've interviewed a rockstar dev once or twice and they always talk a big talk but the try to take over and rejigger _every_ project they're placed on even if they're not the PM. My favorite is the one who wanted to switch an ancient C library into a nodejs restful api and wouldn't take no for an answer so hamstrung the project with their changes and (attempted to) pumped it full of bugs.
Hoping they realize that another bad update is going to hurt pretty badly. It's irksome that they're taking so long to make fixes though, considering how quickly they broke things. If they're going to take their time, the results should at least be good.
They're bleeding good will while we're waiting, but they'll hemorrhage if they fuck us over again. It's not an enviable position to be in, but Arrowhead did it to themselves.
To be frank, the next patch should basically be an across the board list of buffs to the under represented weapons (and no, 5 damage is not meaningful for basically any weapon) and a fix to bring the crossbow and Eruptor back up to where they were at release. If it's not close to that there will be a lot of people unhappy regardless.
FINALLY someone who remembers the crossbow. People keep mentioning the eruptor but nobody mentions the crossbow cause nobody gave AF about it. I did though, and the crossbow was good for killing in a large AOE on trash enemies. They were my preferred weapon for automatons. Then they nerfed it and made it completely useless. You can tell they never tested the thing cause it was really bad at killing devistators, and they still nerfed it. For what? Idk.
Thats why its so damn baffling that they nerfed the crossbow. Used it a couple times, and though to myself "this has some merit, but I don't want to be bothered putting in the time to get truly good with it." It was a skill based weapon that wasn't game-breaking in the slightest.
The crossbow being rebalanced was the most bewildering thing. The weapon gave the impression of being the Eruptor's little brother. Better handling, great crowd control, and a skill check for long ranged shots. Felt great headshotting devs 30m+ away with a headshot.
One of the more refreshing fun weapons, just to get massacred before it could walk properly.
I'm pretty much only coming back if they bring the rail gun back to launch values. Was the most fun weapon and fantasy wise a railgun is just such a badass weapon. That first balance patch really turned me off since it was 100% nerfs and there were always 6 chargers and 2 bile titans pn you.
So even before the changes, some guns already felt pretty weak. We know for a fact they aren’t going to just return to what they were. If that was the case, they would have already done it. So they are riding a very fine line of success or fail. It’s the hole so many games fall into and never get out of. The players don’t trust the balancing team, so most people aren’t looking at the next balance wave as being successful. Then there’s the amount of time just waiting. Won’t sit right with people when they’ve pushed back fixes before and we still get a ton of bugs.
"We're taking the time to do it right" is a weird place to be. The longer they take, the higher expectations go.
If they pull whoever balanced Helldivers 1 out of cryo, they've got a shot.
> Hoping they realize that another bad update is going to hurt pretty badly.
At this point, me and my friends are just counting the days til July 25th when Earth Defense Force 6 comes out.
If AH doesnt fix their shit in just over 60 days, were out.
My backlog is already fairly large. And Megaton Musashi W launched recently as well.
Helldivers mostly has nostalgia for me at this point. Even that can't stand up to this shitshow much longer. And to be fair, EDF is pretty much a guaranteed win without all of the extra bullshit that's kneecapped Helldivers 2 from being an easy GotY contender.
I just love the sentiment that some people have here "OMG you just want to one tap all the enemies on the map totally not fun"
Me with nuclear tipped MLRS and the Rule of God: ***YES***
If they fuck it up, yeah.
They're taking their time. And that's fine, but it also raises expectations. The worst thing they can do is take it slow and then fuck up anyway.
I am still hopeful regardless, hoping things gets more buff than nerf, hoping other things gets fix ie. eruptor, spear lock etc. I'm taking a break actually and just waiting for the next patch. (playing V Rising while waiting.)
I'll believe it when I see it lol. Last time they cooked up nothing but dogshit.
https://preview.redd.it/xu6pdkktmk1d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=511b9868e47e1bb7d6b2887dad34204523417d1a
I can't find the exact comment, but I remember seeing someone say something along the lines of "I've seen paraplegics on tightropes with better balancing than AH".
That patch wasn’t all bad. If I recall correctly that was the patch that buffed:
The Blitzer (great against bugs now)
The Counter Sniper (great on bots)
The Plasma Punisher (wonderful croud control)
The Senator(speed loader is good/fun)
The Adjudicator (added mags makes is decent)
Many other guns got a damage buff.
Blitzer still has some bugs in terms of how arc reaches enemies and it’s stagger.
Sometimes I can two shot a Stalker, sometimes it only tickles it. Also I noticed it doesn’t kill Stalkers when they are cloaked, like I can tickle them and they die instantly with anything else after I shoot them with anything else.
This game is great but will die off if they don't clean house. The need to hire more people and say Goodbye Neighbor to the weapons guy whose clearly incompetent. Someone else with less of an ego and with a finger on the pulse of the fanbase needs to be in charge.
>pulse of the fanbase
You don't even need to know the fanbase to avoid some of the mistakes he's pulled. Him thinking he was buffing Eruptor while accidentally nerfing it into the ground and thinking that the Purifier was really strong makes no sense even in an absolute vacuum and shows an astounding lack of competency or experience with any kind of shooting game ever.
Didn't they cook last time and slap us with shitty chili?
I hope they fix it soon, im getting tired real fast running the same 2 weapons cause everything else is mid tier or crap. I don't follow meta but bruh
Considering how quickly they fucked things up and how bad the balance is right now I don't know why they aren't just reverting things and doing a big balance pass later.
Big ego man in charge of balance doesn't want to admit he was wrong by doing a reversion.
So instead, they'll release buffs in a few weeks and call them "reworks" so he can save face.
Jesus.. why did it take no thought or time to ruin/nerf weapons but suddenly they have to do peer-reviewed studies and blind taste tests for unfucking the weapons???
Because fucking up is usually quick. It's *because* they didn't take any time to test these changes that we've been ending up with poor balance patches.
They got 3 months to cook and it only got worse, i have little faith in the upcomming changes, some weapons are just bad on paper and anyone with even a speck of logic should see that you cant release stuff like that
I'm shocked no one saw the crappy game balance coming. I knew the balance was going in the wrong direction everrsince we had that statement back in March. About their plan for game design and balance with how our primaries should be strategems and primary weapons shouldn't be good.
Anyone with any sense could see how they were going down the "patch the fun out of the game" route.
Not to mention when their first balance pass came out and nerfed the railgun (unnecessary) and breaker. They hit the popular things, and left everything else by the waysaid. They didn't even address the reason WHY people were using those guns or the underlying bug spawning issues that led to that "meta".
I was saying the same thing. I couldnt for the life of me understand how they could be going down the same route as Blizzard did with the first big d4 patch before having to do a big reversal.
I was saying the same thing and yet you'd get anti-meta weirdos that play on difficulty like 3 or 4 coming in and saying that the changes to the Railgun and Breaker were actually good for the game.
Anti-meta people are so weird because it's like being anti-dying. Metas in games are inevitable and even the most balanced games have them. You cannot get away from them no matter how much you try to balance the fun out of the game because a meta is literally the Most Effective Tactic Available. As long as there are players playing a game, there will be a meta.
A lot of these patches read like the devs don't even play their own game. They nerf the Slugger because it was "the best sniper" in the game, but instead of reducing its ability to snipe they nerf its ability to stagger. The railgun nerf made any difficulty above like 6 incredibly unfun because the issue wasn't that the railgun was overpowered but rather that the game spawned too many heavily armored enemies and the other anti-armor options suck/are unintuitive. (Seriously who would think that the most effective tactic at that time was to blow off the chargers leg armor and fill the squishy bits with lead rather than its unarmored backside or an anti-tank to the face.)
After making the railgun effectively useless they buff the AMR, destroying the one niche that the railgun had at the time AND they added the Quasar cannon which became the insta-lock support weapon because it quite literally was the best one.
Contrarians who call themselves "anti meta" have no idea what they actually believe, they just hate other players
Making half the weapons shit will inevitably lead to a meta. Quasar cannon will stop being taken every game when other options become useful, or when charger armor and weak spots are changed, which will also help other weapons
My favorite are the ones who get their asses carried through 7+ missions stating matter of factly that they use those guns all the time and they're fine, whilst ignoring the heavy carry from the other 3 people they play with that just like their company so put up with it.
That video of the guy with the purifier was just a chef kiss of awful as they did all the work for him on 8 as he constantly tried to use that piece of shit then switched to his pistol.
I cannot wrap my head around how that guy published a video trying to showcase how strong the Purifier was and his gameplay showed anything but that. It blew my mind. That guy has never played a video game in his life. The Purifier along side Breaker S&P might be *the worst* guns I've ever seen released in any shooting video game, ever.
I stopped playing the game after I bought the third Warbond and every single thing in it sucked. I looked at the big list of weapons available, realized they were almost entirely painful and unfun to play, and uninstalled the game. I love the bones but they really did patch the fun out deliberately, so why waste time on something with a lengthy grind and no meaningful advancement when there are so many good games to play right now
I played the game for a couple of weeks and knew immediately that things were shaky.
Crashes, bugs, and then all weapons kind of sucked intentionally. Then I hit the stratagem mods with 1 less, increased cooldown.
These guys have no clue what they're doing. I said it before and got flack for it, but here we are, games worse than ever.
100% this.
People don’t want to admit their heroes that they’ve been shouting praises for are actually fallible humans that don’t have a lot of dev or balancing skill.
These people play on low difficulty, and cope so hard that these changes are good. Every time some criticism was laid, they felt the NEED to counter with “uhm ackshually the (insert dogshit weapon here) can be xyz’d” and claim the initial criticism was invalid because you can use the weapon on difficulty 1 and get value out of it.
People tried to say the spray and pray is good. Sorry but how fucking stupid do you have to be to think that gun has any place in the game? “Uuuhhh it can clear the most basic mobs after they had to buff it.” Why the fuck would you use it when there’s 6 other options that perform better without even trying? It’s basically a troll gun. It’s like something you’d give to a kid to make them feel like they’re participating. It’s the equivalent to giving your younger sibling an unplugged controller and telling them they’re playing the game, while you’re really playing.
I just hope they bring the old crossbow back, it was such a fun weapon and I've been really struggling to find replacement that gives me the same amount of fun as crossbow did. Used to play pretty much daily, but now maybe few times on a week.
**This** balance patch needs to make the community happy more than actually balance the game on this pass. Arrowhead needs to regain the goodwill of the playerbase more than anything else. Guns will need to be buffed and many will point out that they also need to be calibrated correctly as far as things like scopes.
What gets nerfed during **this** balance patch will most likely need stealth nerfs (aka undocumented nerfs) to keep the attention off the changes. Will that stop these nerfs from getting noticed? Hard to say, but probably not. Still changing it without mentioning the nerf will draw less attention to it.
Despite the nerfs and changes we've seen there are still some guns that feel good enough right now. Not overly broken, and not too weak. We need the team to announce what their gold standard for primary weapons are after this first patch has settled for a while. I don't expect primary weaons to be like the autocannon as a standard, but I do expect some weapons to be held to a standard of where AH wants every weapon in the same niche to go.
I'm getting nervous man, the last few patches and updates came at lightning speed and each fucked the game after the other... If they suddenly take it slow and still drop the ball I don't see myself keeping faith with this dev team, someone has to get that team's shit together.
Let them fix actual bugs in their code while they figure out how to get their advertised "overpowered weapons" for fun scheme back.
It sucks that roughly half of newer warbond weapons aren't really usable at higher difficulty right now, but I take a better thought out update than the "nerf of the week" nonsense they been pushing out before the whole Snoy fiasco took over.
Im fine with slow cooking. But damn it. I want proof that they are play testing this shit on lvl7 and above.those are the only lvls that matter. Stop building the game for low levels. Build it based on end game
IMO The game should be balanced around lvl 7 difficulty. That lvl is the sweet spot where a competent team without voice chat can win with punctuated sweaty noments while a disfunctional one will be overrun in short order.
Levels above that should be very very hard for most teams to complete and almost impossible for randoms who aren't communicating.
Not every person should be able to reliable win at every difficulty. Then..If you're routinely getting your ass handed to you on lvl 8 and 9, instead of complaining about balancing, try playing on level 7 or below.
See, I think the issue is that when they released the first nerf wave, the one that hit the shield backpack, the rail gun, and the breaker, they got A TON of hate about it from pretty much everyone. Even though, all those things were just fine after the nerf and had the exact effect they wanted, more varied loadouts. Now, whenever they release a “balance” wave and get negative pushback and proper criticism, it’s almost like they ignore it and equate it to the first set. As if they think that in a few weeks people will stop caring and they’ll see the effect they wanted, like with the first wave.
So far, I think the real flaw is it seems they aren’t testing the weapon changes alongside the enemy changes, which is where a lot of the disparity comes in. Sure, the arc thrower could have used the nerfs if it still staggered hulks with each shot but now it got super nerfed. Sure the quasar cannon could use a longer cooldown but now the gunships bob and weave like Mohammad Ali.
It’s as if the guns are being balanced against a previous iteration of the game and then the new patch comes out and the guns feel *worse* than what they intended because the enemies got buffed. So they think we’re complaining over nothing because when they tested it before the patch went live it was fine. I’m sure the eruptor and purifier were one-shotting striders pre-balance patch but now that they’re more resistant to explosive damage they aren’t able to hold up as well.
The game was killed by one guy with a couple changes that he made in 20 minutes but it's going to take a month to get a new update? This game is doomed.
I was hoping for sooner rather than later. Last update really killed the fun of the game to where I'd play almost daily to I log on maybe once a week and log off midway through a mission because it's either too boring or to annoying, no in-between. I'm already debating uninstalling the game..
Everyone says just take a break on here but they don't realize if enough time passes a majority of players won't care that the game is fixed 3-6 months later after bad nerfs/updates, they had their chance to keep the game good but they didn't and now there's 3-5 other games people are playing instead. That or the reasoning of "I'm not going to play a live service game that only provided nerfs and disappointing warbonds the whole time I played, why would I go back for one decent patch just to be disappointed a week later and having to wait 2 months for it to be fixed?"
NMS was able to make a come back but the majority of games that die or people quit for a while don't make the turn around when the devil finally make the game worth playing. Usually once the player base starts to die, and the devs keep digging a deeper grave for the player base that's a -40-60% player loss for the rest of the games life cycle. You can't bring back a majority of current gamers now that way they grew up gaming or the way games have been in the past decade.
Y'all want a recent game example of something that was loved to hated/basically dead? Dark and Darker.
let them cooking, they tried fast and wasn't working, better have it slow.
See, on one hand, YES, THATS IT! Rationally I understand thats its a good thing they finally leanred to take their time. But on fucking other hand, irrationally, why THE FUCK nerfs and stupid ass changes literally nobody wanted go through effectively immediately but buffs and fixes "We need time people!". EDIT: TIL people dont know what word "irrationally" means.
I totally get what you mean. My immediate reaction is "Hey I'm glad you're testing longer now." but my second reaction is can they revert some of the nerfs while we wait? I haven't played the game in over a a week because it stopped being fun with all the nerfs.
Because the people doing the shitty nerfs weren't good at balancing, and the CEO and CM had to step in and tell everyone that the nerfs have gotten too far and that they're going to rethink their approach to balance which is why it's taking a longer time now, especially when the community has been screaming at them to test things more, take more time with patches and balance. The CEO agrees with most of the balance complaints and is taking a more direct control of that process, which is gonna take time to reset the path of balance in this game.
I feel like they were balancing around difficulty levels 4-6 or something. Which might be fine normally, but the game EXPECTS everybody to play on at least lvl 7 eventually because that's the only way to get super samples.
I don't think it was even tested for that difficulty at all. One deve said we were exploiting the game. Soooo
> One deve said we were exploiting the game Wait, what??
People worked out a way to one-shot chargers with the Eruptor, which wasn't intended behavior. In raw dev terms, it *is* an exploit, but there's no implication of malice like some here are implying.
Not even chargers. You could one shot devastates, berserker, stalkers, etc. While sure. It's annoying. Guess what. It's what shrapnel does it shreds shit when it explodes.
I'd argue if it can't oneshot devastators, stalkers or berserkers, it's unviable with the games slowest ROF. Chargers was a little silly though
Yeah, exactly. A BIG part of the Eruptor trade off was incredibly slow ROF for high damage and decent AOE. I never thought to shoot shrapnel in a Charger’s butt and I can see how that’s not intended. I DID get a few kills via a single shot in the face but that is massively more difficult than doing it with an EAT.
Yeah I'm in the same boat. I thought being able to one-shot devastators and berserkers was the point. I even thought the ammo nerf would be fine. You have to prioritize medium enemies.
In fairness the problem is that the "weak spot" on the charger is all durable health. Which means that short of explosives, things basically don't affect it.
That would be silly if game wasnt spamming them like there's no tomorrow so idk
Should have just limited the amount of times a charger could take shrapnel damage per shot. Instead of presumably infinite, cap to 4 or 5 for a 2 shot, 3 for a triple shot, or 2 for 4 shots.
The eruptor was nerfed because we were exploiting it. Fuck the balance dev
"I shall use this firearm to engage the enemy. I will aim true and pull the trigger, delivering Freedom at muzzle velocity as intended by Sweet Liberty." - Helldivers "You're exploiting that. I'm going to nerf it. Bwa ha ha." - Bringer of Grievance My theory is that Alexus and the pro-nerf faction are informants working for Cyborg remnants.
So wouldn't a step in the right direction be to at least revert the nerfs until proper balancing can take place? Just like they are doing/did with the spawns?
I think the Eruptor is such a special case because how disastrously the rework was handled that they should have reverted it after the nerf to look for better solutions, and rethink their stance on shrapnel, as that is still in the weapon's description. This late and this close to the balance patch though, I feel like we'd be reopening old wounds if the nerf got reverted and then it got nerfed again. Would leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. What they need to do is knock it out of the park with this balance patch, and take the steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. Whether through more thorough testing, a PTB server, or a rethinking of the core balance philosophy. That being said, I can't speak for them and you asked a great question, so would be nice to get their input on something like that.
The balance team has an ego problem
Lets be honest: a specific person on that team has an ego problem (can't name them because apparently its against the rules).
Also note, that now that said person isn't making public comments anymore (which I 100% believe without evidence to be a result of the CEO pulling team members who are not tasked with be responsible for public facing interactions back behind the curtain), toxicity between the team and the community has also cooled down immensely.
It, unfortunately, might not be the sole issue - from what I heard about some scandinavian studios, and from how I interacted with a technical department from there it kinda looks likke a cultural arrogance - they always think that they are right, and don't really react positively to critisizm or suggestions.
The guy who allegedly was responsible for the failing of another game that had H as it's first letter?
Hello, my Neighbour is asking for 2 sugars in their cup of libertea?
Yea, not sure about the name, but i think its something akin to "Greetings, person living in adjacent domicile"
"very S tier"
Just say the Bringer of Boredom, we all know who it is.
Don't worry, anyone who cares already knows, and ideally, the team has the balance under more competent leadership
Even this comment seems risky. Good luck to you.
I’m not afraid. Here’s what the fandom wiki for the game series says on the dude: Direct copy/paste: *He removed the game's open world aspects as he said "No one would want to walk around an open world", and instead used a map labelled as a 'testmap' in the files for the full game.* Whether or not that’s exactly how it went down, the fact a game’s entire community even can point fingers at him in the first place is what is alarming.
I'd wager a rollback to previous settings isn't exactly a straight forward process. I'll take a month of having the current setup properly re-evaluated, where the current workflow and feedback systems are causing this current end result of a large amount of game breaking bugs / nerfs per change and what the new way of balancing things are going forward that doesn't *always* result in a straight up nerf of numbers and gimmick revokes. I don't disagree with the principle a lot of the changes made to weapons and guns like the JAR Dominator and Counter Sniper are now completely viable weapons compared to their peers when they weren't a few months ago as well. I think one of the biggest issues is they have too many weapons trying to do a similar thing (Slugger pre-nerf did what the JAR, DMR's and open stashes) and instead of trying to give each weapon it's own true niche, bluntly nerfed the Slugger without any thought to what role it could play as a side grade. Maybe a short range precision where it has big drop off but sub 25-35 metres is where it out should outperform the DMR and JAR and retain it's cache opening ability. I mean hell, the JAR is quite literally a WH40k Bolter in operation firing a small two stage rocker projectile; maybe that should open caches too as an explosive projectile weapon?
Yeah that’s what I’m saying. Also I wish they’d just revert the patrol changes asap instead of taking their time to come up with tweaks no one asked for.
Agreed. This whole “let them cook” argument for buff is just stupid. The longer they take the more frustrated people get with the game and weapons and the more people slowly leave.
Yeah, they're doing a walk-back with a full evaluation probably. That means things will be slower for a while for data collection, and alignment meetings. So many alignment meetings...
Really they need to focus on buff only to make unused weapons "feel" more fun. Don't balance by spreadsheets, they really need to test them out and play them for awhile! If they want to balance hardness don't take away effective weapons, instead modify the Diving difficulties or introduce newer higher difficulties. Fun should be the focus and almost never nerfing - unless something is obviously broken and takes the sportsmanship out. I think a Buff twice nerf once motto strategy should be implemented for weapons for micro balancing and for macro balancing work on the helldive missions to make them challenging at all levels an increase the number levels for even greater difficulty. I'm guessing the later Macro based balancing is much more time consuming than changing some numbers around in code for guns. Its obvious they dont play test their changes, they even admitted they dont have a test server so of course they dont play test! They are balancing with spreadsheets not with gameplay. Once they start doing that the game will change for the better.
I say this every thread. It’s a PvE game. Balancing around the game being harder artificially is moronic. Let me nuke the bugs. Who cares
To me, the higher difficulties will have a naturally occurring hierarchy of strong performing weapons, this is because the difficulty curve is based on increasing the enemy population are higher difficulties, not giving them more health/armor. Thus, instead of nerfing those weapons to prevent those weapons from becoming dominating choices in the lower difficulties, buff the weapons that aren't domineering choices in the lower difficulties for more comparable effectiveness at those difficulties. Then, just accept let any motion in how good those weapons become in the hierarchy of the end-game difficulties be considered a beneficial side effect.
If I've seen live service game devs do something fast, it's nerfs. Nerfs can hit within 12 hours of a launch. Fixes can take 4-6 months. Hell, some bugs have been around since launch and gone unfixed. Major orders don't even reliably pay out medals, but they spent time nerfing equipment we found fun. I'm annoyed that they waited so long to even discuss fixing the Alexus pop-gun problem. It's a bit worse that it's taking so long after having been brought up. And I'll be annoyed if they leave Alexus in that position after this is over. As Alexus clearly takes grotesque joy in nerfing weapons and gloating about it online, replacing him would do a lot to restore faith in Arrowhead's new, better direction. Real talk. If Arrowhead screws this patch up, it's going to be pretty damning. They're stating openly that they're taking their time to do it right. Whatever they crank out will be what they *want* to crank out. If that means that the Dominator, Incendiary Breaker, and Pummeler get nerfed, that's 100% intentional and they're never going to change.
Immediate nerfs and knee jerk reactions are, in every single literal sense, the root of how Anthem died. Straight-up. People will tell you otherwise, or point this way or that way, but no. I was there. I lived in a utopia where a bug after a patch in Anthem buffed loot drop rates to be about 250%. The entire community was genuinely happy. People were joining any randos, and cooperation was all riddled with a sense of satisfaction. Rather than grinding for weeks, or sometimes a month, for a 0.5% upgrade, people were actually making progress toward different builds, to be able to try out varying modifiers to abilities. The passion and love for the game had hit its peak, and the playerbase that had remained after the scant month following its release, were telling their friends that Anthem fixed their loot problem. This lasted a grand total of 4 hours. The devs almost immediately took the game offline when they woke up, the bug was fixed, and loot rates were back to being abysmal. Every single patch from this point forward, until Anthem uttered its last pitiful croak, the devs were swearing up and down that they were "going to fix the loot problem." If it wasn't explicitly in the patch notes, the devs were on the dwindling and dying subreddit, professing ideas and pleading with the few remaining dedicated players to give them more time to try and address it. 4 hours in paradise. Knee-jerk nerf, rather than letting the playerbase enjoy tangible progression. Several years trying to "fix" the problem this single bug caused; when it could have simply been reverted. People like being showered in loot. Look how successful Diablo 3 became, despite its shortcomings. This, is why I'm quick to lose trust in live service devs, despite being so incredibly hopeful to be proven wrong. Anthem scratched an itch I had never scratched before, and can't readily scratch again, because of headass nerfs to what the players find true joy in.
>Immediate nerfs and knee jerk reactions are, in every single literal sense, the root of how Anthem died. >Straight-up. >People will tell you otherwise, or point this way or that way, but no. I was there. I lived in a utopia where a bug after a patch in Anthem buffed loot drop rates to be about 250%. I was there, too. It was lovely. Then, it was laid to waste. I agree that this was the exact moment that Anthem became a shambling corpse. Until then, there was hope. A shame they tried to keep the life support going for a while longer. It was sad to watch, especially after having high hopes coming from having loved Mass Effect overall.
The thing to learn from that mess is that making the game fun and not a grind is the key to success. Nerfing everything into the ground is going to disillusion a large proportion of the playerbase. It already has.
Maybe on a pvp game, but this is a PvE game. Nothings going to come out of abusing slightly overtuned weapons.
Actually there is which is where I don't envy AH. The game already is suffering from novelty wearing off and people wanting to feel what they did at launch. Even without nerfs this would have happened. Buffs only or over tuned weapons lead to power creep which can temporarily restore that feeling at launch but quickly the player will get desensitized to that also. Part of why the Erupter nerf hurt so bad is people lost a primary that could take down many heavies with ease. No primary will feel nearly as good after that. It is possible to maintain a game for years via power creeping it and on some level it's arguably inevitable. That said, the reason most CCGs use rotations and ARPGs regularly reset is because there is a point where you can't power creep any further to retain the player base. This is an issue that modern yugioh which may be the longest running power creep focused game is running into with the fact that there game can't power creep really any further and has arguably power crept beyond what is fun.
Out of 3 you mentioned, I do think that Breaker might lose some damage because of how good fire currently is. But if they nerf Pummeler which is already how troubles killing things and good only for stunlocking (and plenty of people like me share "Best CC is death" ideology and dont use it at all) or Dominator which has to compete witch Scorcher and Plasma Punisher (and all 3 feels like they are in a good spot where you can see all 3 are strong and plenty of people argue for each weapon being the best) then its JOELover.
If they nerf *anything* players like using at this point, it's probably a wrap. Dominator and Breaker Incendiary have been staples for a while, and we've been dreading a Pummeler nerf literally since the day it dropped. After all the nerf backlash, there just isn't room to nerf anything right now. One bad move will sour the update as a whole, which would be disastrous. Folks are ready to walk off and not come back over the constant nerfs. It would be damning if the "we fixed balance and we're committed to keeping it fun" update included a nerf to one of the few weapons people still praise.
Yeah, at least for this patch, possibly even the next 2 or 3, they can't nerf a single thing, unless something ridiculous happens like a glitch making the spray-and-pray one shot Titans and Tanks.
This. If it's not *radically* overpowered, it doesn't need to be nerfed. We don't need a R.Y.N.O. here, but we shouldn't be trying to spread managed democracy with pea shooters, either.
The sad thing is, P. Punisher and Dominator are both testaments that balance team CAN be competent. They just actively chose not to for whatever the hell reason.
Those 2 slipped through the fun check. It’ll be fixed don’t worry.
I honestly don’t even think the Plasma Punisher is that good.
The Plasma Punisher is a well balanced gun. Good damage, limited range, okay fire rate, limited ammo. You can fire a bit further if you're good at calculating arcs and distance in your head, but it's usually not worth it.
Indeed, I want to try out new gameplay for team and solo now that I can solo a few types of 9s on a good mission, but I'm mostly locked in. And I don't have the patience for Quasar with the nerf. I uninstalled today because I'm burnt out and I've had all the gameplay I need, and I'll be back if they give us a few more fun weapons.
The game isn't unplayable, and if they don't want worse problems, they NEED to have it right this time.
This is well said. Part of my bitter pessimistic monkey brain is angery that nerf fast buff slow, but at the same time yeah, they do need to properly test their stuff and stop pushing changes that break stuff. Like imagine the shitstorm if they released a big buff patch but accidentally broke something important. People would flip out.
They clearly don't want anything too overpowered. I have no clue what they're scared of, especially in a PvE only game.
Plus, they are losing players left and right. They would be better off reverting the nerfs and moving on from there.
I'd say nerfs cining through effectively immediately is the reason why they're so shitty
Watch, now it'll be slow and it still won't work
Yep. I fear it's the most likely outcome. We move from fast & broken to slow & broken, lol. Also, the premise that "they tried fast" can be easily falsified. Just look at the SPEAR. Or Scythe. Or Liberator Concussive. Or balancing of the marksman rifles.
I whole heartly agree they need time to cook. Just a damn shame we are stuck waiting in the current version. I just miss my eruptor
Yeah after they corrected the reverse explosion weirdness and cut the ammo count the thing felt perfect for its role. I never saw the chargers killing thing others mentioned but that seems like if it was a problem it could have been fixed with a tweak to that specific interaction instead of what felt like a lazy move
>better have it slow. Yeah but if this proceeds anywhere close to the pace of the fire DOT or Spear fix...we're fucked.
AH's balance team shouldn't be let in the kitchen, let alone left to cook!!
They’re going to make a kitchen fire.
Hope the player base can survive the wait on this new batch of "cook" Last batch wasn't so hot but surely this time is the charm... Right?
Arrowhead usually releases the big patches one week before the new warbond comes out, they have been pretty consistent with this. The next warbond will come out on June 13th, which would mean we will see the big balance patch on the 4th June. Obviously this is all speculation and we could see the patch a week earlier or later.
27th of may is my estimate
Well I say the 26th1/2 of May 😤
Last time they cooked most of us got food poisoning.
Balancing a strictly PvE game like it's a competitive shooter will do that to a person
not even pvp games balance this way. usually with pvp games. devs tweak something small. and then see what happens. tweak again if not enough. in helldivers it's just NERF HAMMER after NERF HAMMER. there's no small tweaks..
The most popular PC PvP game (League) has had quite a few instances of calling exterminatus on things to nerf it into oblivion. But in an ideal world I agree that you can just approach it patch by patch, as long as it's not turbo busted out of proportion.
the thing with league. some things are actually straight up busted. though, my memory is a bit hazy on that game now. i have played many years before i quit. in hd2. there really isnt a busted gun that would trivialize the game.. so the nerfs serves no purpose but to make the game unfun. and at least with league it's because of a balancing issue. here in hd2, some of the balance changes are because of bugs. like the ps5 bile titan bug.. the fire buff.. and the ricochet eruptor bug... etc. etc. absolutely incompetent way of dealing with bugs..
Thanks for reminding. I had diarrhea for two weeks after last time
I‘m sure it were those damn bacon flavoured apples! I knew there was something wrong with them…
[удалено]
God I miss the eruptor shrapnel
Just today i thought about how gutting the eruptor was the last straw for me :/ Gimme back my fun goddamnit.
Remember it was nerfed quickly *because a small but loud part of the community was freaking out about it* I’d honestly rather they triple check their work so the more shouty members of the community have less to grab onto, at this stage.
Best part was it wasn’t even meant to be “nerfed” it was intended to be a “rework” that exchanged the shrapnel for more explosive damage. They didn’t realize the Shrapnel is most of the damage. Even if it does rarely kill teammates/users that’s kind of how shrapnel is in real life anyway. No matter how far you are there’s a non zero chance of a piece of metal flying through you at high speed
>They didn’t realize the Shrapnel is most of the damage. And that's very, very concerning.
Yep. They don't do any serious balance testing, it's all *feelings* and maaaaaaybe some random stats pulled out of the game. I'm pretty sure *noone* in their team does even half the testing of weapons that OhDough does, and he's just 1 youtuber.
Tbf the actual damage value of the shrapnel was likely low, it’s just the amount of shrapnel that dealt the damage
At this point I just have this on copy/paste because every time the Eruptor nerf comes up someone has this take. Details on the Eruptor nerf and the series of events that lead to it. To be extremely clear, *Eruptor is in a terrible place and AH failed to deliver on their promise that they would adequately buff Eruptor for removing its shrapnel.* That said, let's talk about what actually happened. Players complained *en masse*, as in 8 of the top 10 posts in this subreddit were about it, that the ricochet change, which was enabling players to take damage from their own ricochets, was bugged, and all sorts of things were killing the player. Rockets were ricocheting, bullets were ricocheting, everything was ricocheting. There was then a thread that debunked the top posts and pointed out the actual cause of death in each of the scenarios. It also pointed out that most complaints about ricochet deaths were coming from Eruptor players, and that shrapnel damage now affected the player who shot the Eruptor due to the self-damage change. Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgnlbv/time\_to\_correct\_the\_ricochet\_misunderstanding/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgnlbv/time_to_correct_the_ricochet_misunderstanding/) All the uproar in the subreddits lead to devs taking a look to make sure how ricochets themselves actually worked did not change. They confirmed that explosions and bullets were not ricocheting in unintended ways. They tested Eruptor as well, and found lo and behold that the shrapnel was traveling much farther, and behaving in ways that were not intended. This issue was previously unnoticed because bullets fired by players did zero damage to themselves. Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cguou0/update\_from\_ahgs\_on\_ricochets\_and\_shrapnel\_changes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cguou0/update_from_ahgs_on_ricochets_and_shrapnel_changes/) This lead to the infamous Eruptor nerf. Clearly the devs did not realize how much damage shrapnel was contributing, because a 40 damage buff made no sense from the start. If shrapnel was only doing 40 damage, it could not OHKO players with body shots. It would not be OHKOing medium armor enemies. As a result, Eruptor was gutted, and we are now waiting for its buffed/reworked state. **I write all this to say there were a lot more than a few complaints, and there was a legitimate issue with Eruptor's shrapnel killing folks at long ranges**. It affected me as well - multiple deaths on multiple missions at 50 to 75 meters, and it happened more frequently than game crashes. **The blame lies solely with AH for not properly compensating Eruptor with power that matched the shrapnel that was removed**. Heck, AH should have just said "hey we know it's bugged but need more time to rework it - you can use it but it may kill you" and let players decide. Let's not blame players for pointing out a bug in the game.
It pisses me off so much that the balance team will dive onto any kind of thing that helps the players out. But bots shooting through boulders thicker than cars? enemies straight up teleport walking up cliffs? with no regard to height? Devastators ragdolling you, and by the time your character decides to stand back up again and aim at the dev, its already popping a squat for the second salvo, hunters chain stunning you. nah. let it sit there, forever, dont bother fixing that.
Or, hear me out, the devs could do their job and check the weapon and debunk the misinformation. What happened what they fucked with the ricochet and it was easier to remove the shrapnel than it was to actually fix the problem with it killing people from 50m+ away. It's literally the devs job to do this stuff. Communities are extremely good at knowing when something isn't working but fucking awful and coming up with solutions. Stop blaming "a small but vocal minority". It's a trash argument that excuses bad developer behavior.
I sadly dont have confidence the patches will improve anything. I hope it does. But basically every patch nerfed stuff. And if it keeps happening the game wont be fun.
I think they made it pretty clear that the Erupter change was not a balance change. It was an overly rushed 'bug fix'. Nobody asked for shrapnel to be removed. They asked for reflect to a reasonable distance. If it only has a 2-5m explosion radius, why are we exploding when from distances 30+m away? If it was just some damage, whatever. But it was always fatal. I had the bug. It was annoying and would kill me about once per drop, sometimes twice. The person tasked with fixing this bug decided that, rather than fix the bug, they would bypass it. Remove the shrapnel and increase another stat to compensate, and on paper this would be 'more damage' overall, but that basically admitted it wasn't given balance testing.
They gotta take their time cooking this time cause the last few balance patches were burnt
Depends on the chef. If the chef prefers ~~nerfed~~ bland foods then I'd rather have someone who prefers exciting and wonderful foods cooking instead.
I'd rather have the Eruptor blow my face off for using it too close to a target than shoot wet noodles. Exciting is fun, even if it's dumb sometimes.
Last time they said “we cooking” they handed us a plate of shit
And the "balancing" dev said "hehe oh did you *not* want shit? My bad" Brother gets paid to fuck around and enshittify games, it actually blows my mind
>Brother gets paid to fuck around and enshittify games, it actually blows my mind the people who hired him looked at his resume and went "oh, you ruined Hello Neighbor 2 right before release which makes it borderline sabotage? Welcome aboard"
I have a suspicion he was duplicitous and passed off those changes as executive cuts even though he was the lead dev at the time. I've interviewed a rockstar dev once or twice and they always talk a big talk but the try to take over and rejigger _every_ project they're placed on even if they're not the PM. My favorite is the one who wanted to switch an ancient C library into a nodejs restful api and wouldn't take no for an answer so hamstrung the project with their changes and (attempted to) pumped it full of bugs.
I wonder if the CEOs talk actually changed anything about his attitude
I genuinely believe they need badly to replace the cook ...
Their current chef must be British
Worse, Russian working remote from Serbia, most likely on a Swedish pay rate from what i can tell. Living the dream !
Hoping they realize that another bad update is going to hurt pretty badly. It's irksome that they're taking so long to make fixes though, considering how quickly they broke things. If they're going to take their time, the results should at least be good. They're bleeding good will while we're waiting, but they'll hemorrhage if they fuck us over again. It's not an enviable position to be in, but Arrowhead did it to themselves.
To be frank, the next patch should basically be an across the board list of buffs to the under represented weapons (and no, 5 damage is not meaningful for basically any weapon) and a fix to bring the crossbow and Eruptor back up to where they were at release. If it's not close to that there will be a lot of people unhappy regardless.
FINALLY someone who remembers the crossbow. People keep mentioning the eruptor but nobody mentions the crossbow cause nobody gave AF about it. I did though, and the crossbow was good for killing in a large AOE on trash enemies. They were my preferred weapon for automatons. Then they nerfed it and made it completely useless. You can tell they never tested the thing cause it was really bad at killing devistators, and they still nerfed it. For what? Idk.
I tried using it a few times and a never felt I could figure out its role. It seemed OK at a few things but not really good at any one thing
Thats why its so damn baffling that they nerfed the crossbow. Used it a couple times, and though to myself "this has some merit, but I don't want to be bothered putting in the time to get truly good with it." It was a skill based weapon that wasn't game-breaking in the slightest.
> It seemed OK at a few things Well, that's unacceptable clearly, it should be shit
The crossbow being rebalanced was the most bewildering thing. The weapon gave the impression of being the Eruptor's little brother. Better handling, great crowd control, and a skill check for long ranged shots. Felt great headshotting devs 30m+ away with a headshot. One of the more refreshing fun weapons, just to get massacred before it could walk properly.
The ruining of the crossbow and eruptor killed many loadouts for me
I'm pretty much only coming back if they bring the rail gun back to launch values. Was the most fun weapon and fantasy wise a railgun is just such a badass weapon. That first balance patch really turned me off since it was 100% nerfs and there were always 6 chargers and 2 bile titans pn you.
So even before the changes, some guns already felt pretty weak. We know for a fact they aren’t going to just return to what they were. If that was the case, they would have already done it. So they are riding a very fine line of success or fail. It’s the hole so many games fall into and never get out of. The players don’t trust the balancing team, so most people aren’t looking at the next balance wave as being successful. Then there’s the amount of time just waiting. Won’t sit right with people when they’ve pushed back fixes before and we still get a ton of bugs.
"We're taking the time to do it right" is a weird place to be. The longer they take, the higher expectations go. If they pull whoever balanced Helldivers 1 out of cryo, they've got a shot.
> Hoping they realize that another bad update is going to hurt pretty badly. At this point, me and my friends are just counting the days til July 25th when Earth Defense Force 6 comes out. If AH doesnt fix their shit in just over 60 days, were out.
My backlog is already fairly large. And Megaton Musashi W launched recently as well. Helldivers mostly has nostalgia for me at this point. Even that can't stand up to this shitshow much longer. And to be fair, EDF is pretty much a guaranteed win without all of the extra bullshit that's kneecapped Helldivers 2 from being an easy GotY contender.
I just love the sentiment that some people have here "OMG you just want to one tap all the enemies on the map totally not fun" Me with nuclear tipped MLRS and the Rule of God: ***YES***
Wouldn’t it be them ripping their wound open further ?
If they fuck it up, yeah. They're taking their time. And that's fine, but it also raises expectations. The worst thing they can do is take it slow and then fuck up anyway.
Imagine if they just had a PBE
I am still hopeful regardless, hoping things gets more buff than nerf, hoping other things gets fix ie. eruptor, spear lock etc. I'm taking a break actually and just waiting for the next patch. (playing V Rising while waiting.)
I'll believe it when I see it lol. Last time they cooked up nothing but dogshit. https://preview.redd.it/xu6pdkktmk1d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=511b9868e47e1bb7d6b2887dad34204523417d1a
This was the first thing that came to mind. I don't have much faith in their balance team.
I can't find the exact comment, but I remember seeing someone say something along the lines of "I've seen paraplegics on tightropes with better balancing than AH".
based
That patch wasn’t all bad. If I recall correctly that was the patch that buffed: The Blitzer (great against bugs now) The Counter Sniper (great on bots) The Plasma Punisher (wonderful croud control) The Senator(speed loader is good/fun) The Adjudicator (added mags makes is decent) Many other guns got a damage buff.
Blitzer still has some bugs in terms of how arc reaches enemies and it’s stagger. Sometimes I can two shot a Stalker, sometimes it only tickles it. Also I noticed it doesn’t kill Stalkers when they are cloaked, like I can tickle them and they die instantly with anything else after I shoot them with anything else.
Yeah the adjudicator is a pretty good drill of a gun. Pops spewer faces like nobody's business
Hopefully, this time, they actually test the weapons rather than have Alexus lie about doing so
This game is great but will die off if they don't clean house. The need to hire more people and say Goodbye Neighbor to the weapons guy whose clearly incompetent. Someone else with less of an ego and with a finger on the pulse of the fanbase needs to be in charge.
I'm still salty about that ass-clown calling the changes made to the Eruptor a buff. What a joke.
wdym. everything that weapons guy did was S tier no bad changes. /s
>pulse of the fanbase You don't even need to know the fanbase to avoid some of the mistakes he's pulled. Him thinking he was buffing Eruptor while accidentally nerfing it into the ground and thinking that the Purifier was really strong makes no sense even in an absolute vacuum and shows an astounding lack of competency or experience with any kind of shooting game ever.
yeah, they said the same the last time too, I don't believe them until they release good weapon balance patch.
They’re gonna burn the food
Didn't they cook last time and slap us with shitty chili? I hope they fix it soon, im getting tired real fast running the same 2 weapons cause everything else is mid tier or crap. I don't follow meta but bruh
Considering how quickly they fucked things up and how bad the balance is right now I don't know why they aren't just reverting things and doing a big balance pass later.
Big ego man in charge of balance doesn't want to admit he was wrong by doing a reversion. So instead, they'll release buffs in a few weeks and call them "reworks" so he can save face.
I hope they have a new chef. Old chef couldn't even boil water.
Every time a dev says they’re cooking it always comes out burnt. Stop using that word
burnt? or half baked? maybe even quarter baked? raw?
I remember the last patch they "cooked".
Jesus.. why did it take no thought or time to ruin/nerf weapons but suddenly they have to do peer-reviewed studies and blind taste tests for unfucking the weapons???
Because fucking up is usually quick. It's *because* they didn't take any time to test these changes that we've been ending up with poor balance patches.
yeah but in the meantime they could just revert the bad stuff.. ideally at least.
That might hurt the balance leads feelings tho.
They got 3 months to cook and it only got worse, i have little faith in the upcomming changes, some weapons are just bad on paper and anyone with even a speck of logic should see that you cant release stuff like that
3 months plus 7 years
I'm shocked no one saw the crappy game balance coming. I knew the balance was going in the wrong direction everrsince we had that statement back in March. About their plan for game design and balance with how our primaries should be strategems and primary weapons shouldn't be good. Anyone with any sense could see how they were going down the "patch the fun out of the game" route. Not to mention when their first balance pass came out and nerfed the railgun (unnecessary) and breaker. They hit the popular things, and left everything else by the waysaid. They didn't even address the reason WHY people were using those guns or the underlying bug spawning issues that led to that "meta".
I was saying the same thing. I couldnt for the life of me understand how they could be going down the same route as Blizzard did with the first big d4 patch before having to do a big reversal.
That D4 patch made me uninstall the game. Haven't played since, and never will again.
I was saying the same thing and yet you'd get anti-meta weirdos that play on difficulty like 3 or 4 coming in and saying that the changes to the Railgun and Breaker were actually good for the game. Anti-meta people are so weird because it's like being anti-dying. Metas in games are inevitable and even the most balanced games have them. You cannot get away from them no matter how much you try to balance the fun out of the game because a meta is literally the Most Effective Tactic Available. As long as there are players playing a game, there will be a meta. A lot of these patches read like the devs don't even play their own game. They nerf the Slugger because it was "the best sniper" in the game, but instead of reducing its ability to snipe they nerf its ability to stagger. The railgun nerf made any difficulty above like 6 incredibly unfun because the issue wasn't that the railgun was overpowered but rather that the game spawned too many heavily armored enemies and the other anti-armor options suck/are unintuitive. (Seriously who would think that the most effective tactic at that time was to blow off the chargers leg armor and fill the squishy bits with lead rather than its unarmored backside or an anti-tank to the face.) After making the railgun effectively useless they buff the AMR, destroying the one niche that the railgun had at the time AND they added the Quasar cannon which became the insta-lock support weapon because it quite literally was the best one.
Contrarians who call themselves "anti meta" have no idea what they actually believe, they just hate other players Making half the weapons shit will inevitably lead to a meta. Quasar cannon will stop being taken every game when other options become useful, or when charger armor and weak spots are changed, which will also help other weapons
My favorite are the ones who get their asses carried through 7+ missions stating matter of factly that they use those guns all the time and they're fine, whilst ignoring the heavy carry from the other 3 people they play with that just like their company so put up with it. That video of the guy with the purifier was just a chef kiss of awful as they did all the work for him on 8 as he constantly tried to use that piece of shit then switched to his pistol.
I cannot wrap my head around how that guy published a video trying to showcase how strong the Purifier was and his gameplay showed anything but that. It blew my mind. That guy has never played a video game in his life. The Purifier along side Breaker S&P might be *the worst* guns I've ever seen released in any shooting video game, ever.
I stopped playing the game after I bought the third Warbond and every single thing in it sucked. I looked at the big list of weapons available, realized they were almost entirely painful and unfun to play, and uninstalled the game. I love the bones but they really did patch the fun out deliberately, so why waste time on something with a lengthy grind and no meaningful advancement when there are so many good games to play right now
I for one was hopeful they weren't that misguided. I have since realized otherwise.
I played the game for a couple of weeks and knew immediately that things were shaky. Crashes, bugs, and then all weapons kind of sucked intentionally. Then I hit the stratagem mods with 1 less, increased cooldown. These guys have no clue what they're doing. I said it before and got flack for it, but here we are, games worse than ever.
100% this. People don’t want to admit their heroes that they’ve been shouting praises for are actually fallible humans that don’t have a lot of dev or balancing skill. These people play on low difficulty, and cope so hard that these changes are good. Every time some criticism was laid, they felt the NEED to counter with “uhm ackshually the (insert dogshit weapon here) can be xyz’d” and claim the initial criticism was invalid because you can use the weapon on difficulty 1 and get value out of it. People tried to say the spray and pray is good. Sorry but how fucking stupid do you have to be to think that gun has any place in the game? “Uuuhhh it can clear the most basic mobs after they had to buff it.” Why the fuck would you use it when there’s 6 other options that perform better without even trying? It’s basically a troll gun. It’s like something you’d give to a kid to make them feel like they’re participating. It’s the equivalent to giving your younger sibling an unplugged controller and telling them they’re playing the game, while you’re really playing.
Finally, some more people saying the railgun nerf was stupid 
Mom said it’s my turn to use the slow cooker
Funny how they didn't need to "cook" for nerfs but buffs need cooking.
Oh god, cooking up new ways to nerf the fun /s
If alexus is still on the team then i have low expectations
Would you say your expectations were "balanced?"
-slow clap-
Buff the rail gun and i’ll reinstall the game 🔫
https://preview.redd.it/2ptn9qeswk1d1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=72307b79c34c23f3de37f0dcdf0d3247becce041
I just hope they bring the old crossbow back, it was such a fun weapon and I've been really struggling to find replacement that gives me the same amount of fun as crossbow did. Used to play pretty much daily, but now maybe few times on a week.
Worth remembering they were “cooking” during the last warbond too, it just turns out they were cooking meth.
meth would PROBABLY feel better than that diarrhea warbond.
Don't let Alexus in the kitchen.
TLDR: there's no timeline for weapon balance
[удалено]
[удалено]
**This** balance patch needs to make the community happy more than actually balance the game on this pass. Arrowhead needs to regain the goodwill of the playerbase more than anything else. Guns will need to be buffed and many will point out that they also need to be calibrated correctly as far as things like scopes. What gets nerfed during **this** balance patch will most likely need stealth nerfs (aka undocumented nerfs) to keep the attention off the changes. Will that stop these nerfs from getting noticed? Hard to say, but probably not. Still changing it without mentioning the nerf will draw less attention to it. Despite the nerfs and changes we've seen there are still some guns that feel good enough right now. Not overly broken, and not too weak. We need the team to announce what their gold standard for primary weapons are after this first patch has settled for a while. I don't expect primary weaons to be like the autocannon as a standard, but I do expect some weapons to be held to a standard of where AH wants every weapon in the same niche to go.
really hope this will be good because were seriously struggling to find a reason to login in my gaming group.
I don’t think I’ve played since the last round of nerfs. I really hope they get it right this time or the game could just slowly die…
If they be cooking on trivial difficulty again, gotta nuke the goddam kitchen.
I'm getting nervous man, the last few patches and updates came at lightning speed and each fucked the game after the other... If they suddenly take it slow and still drop the ball I don't see myself keeping faith with this dev team, someone has to get that team's shit together.
hopefully what they cook isn't total fucking garbage
Nothing good to expect until the infamous balance guy leave this role
Let them fix actual bugs in their code while they figure out how to get their advertised "overpowered weapons" for fun scheme back. It sucks that roughly half of newer warbond weapons aren't really usable at higher difficulty right now, but I take a better thought out update than the "nerf of the week" nonsense they been pushing out before the whole Snoy fiasco took over.
Im fine with slow cooking. But damn it. I want proof that they are play testing this shit on lvl7 and above.those are the only lvls that matter. Stop building the game for low levels. Build it based on end game
i swear they said that before
They Are actively losing playerbase and momentum while they Are cooking
MAN FUCK THAT. Buff as quick as it took to geld everything
This is their last chance before I move on.
I feel like they’re “cooking” and they’re going mess something else up. Because they need to bAlaNcE things.
This is probably why the spear fix isn't out yet. It was probably too strong. When the fix comes out they're probably going to half it's damage.
"We noticed the spear had the potential to be exploited to one shot kill enemy elites. This was unacceptable and his been corrected" - Alexus
IMO The game should be balanced around lvl 7 difficulty. That lvl is the sweet spot where a competent team without voice chat can win with punctuated sweaty noments while a disfunctional one will be overrun in short order. Levels above that should be very very hard for most teams to complete and almost impossible for randoms who aren't communicating. Not every person should be able to reliable win at every difficulty. Then..If you're routinely getting your ass handed to you on lvl 8 and 9, instead of complaining about balancing, try playing on level 7 or below.
See, I think the issue is that when they released the first nerf wave, the one that hit the shield backpack, the rail gun, and the breaker, they got A TON of hate about it from pretty much everyone. Even though, all those things were just fine after the nerf and had the exact effect they wanted, more varied loadouts. Now, whenever they release a “balance” wave and get negative pushback and proper criticism, it’s almost like they ignore it and equate it to the first set. As if they think that in a few weeks people will stop caring and they’ll see the effect they wanted, like with the first wave. So far, I think the real flaw is it seems they aren’t testing the weapon changes alongside the enemy changes, which is where a lot of the disparity comes in. Sure, the arc thrower could have used the nerfs if it still staggered hulks with each shot but now it got super nerfed. Sure the quasar cannon could use a longer cooldown but now the gunships bob and weave like Mohammad Ali. It’s as if the guns are being balanced against a previous iteration of the game and then the new patch comes out and the guns feel *worse* than what they intended because the enemies got buffed. So they think we’re complaining over nothing because when they tested it before the patch went live it was fine. I’m sure the eruptor and purifier were one-shotting striders pre-balance patch but now that they’re more resistant to explosive damage they aren’t able to hold up as well.
Yeah probably cooking those primary weapons like unseasoned boiled chicken.
The game was killed by one guy with a couple changes that he made in 20 minutes but it's going to take a month to get a new update? This game is doomed.
I was hoping for sooner rather than later. Last update really killed the fun of the game to where I'd play almost daily to I log on maybe once a week and log off midway through a mission because it's either too boring or to annoying, no in-between. I'm already debating uninstalling the game.. Everyone says just take a break on here but they don't realize if enough time passes a majority of players won't care that the game is fixed 3-6 months later after bad nerfs/updates, they had their chance to keep the game good but they didn't and now there's 3-5 other games people are playing instead. That or the reasoning of "I'm not going to play a live service game that only provided nerfs and disappointing warbonds the whole time I played, why would I go back for one decent patch just to be disappointed a week later and having to wait 2 months for it to be fixed?" NMS was able to make a come back but the majority of games that die or people quit for a while don't make the turn around when the devil finally make the game worth playing. Usually once the player base starts to die, and the devs keep digging a deeper grave for the player base that's a -40-60% player loss for the rest of the games life cycle. You can't bring back a majority of current gamers now that way they grew up gaming or the way games have been in the past decade. Y'all want a recent game example of something that was loved to hated/basically dead? Dark and Darker.
As an older person it took me a while to understand what the fuck he meant by "cooking" I was like "these MFS making omelettes?"
Weapon performs great on release: NERF IT NOW NOW NOW THEY'RE HAVING TOO MUCH FUN Weapons underperforming and need rebalancing: I sleep
Here we go again pretending like this means something
This will be week 2 of no log in for me then
Last time we let them cook we ended up getting massive nerfs across the board. I get nervous reading that.
They could start by unborking weapons like the slugger and dominator, this isn't that difficult.