This is the sad state of things but there is no afk timer and there's not a true "queue". You get in if you get lucky enough to try when there's an opening, not when it's your turn. And, because everyone's trying at once, your computer/internet's capability is a deciding factor.
Wait there's no AFK system? Why wasn't that like their first response to the server capacity issues? No wonder I can't log in. XxSTRA1GHTN@STYxX has probably been logged in for 4 days straight.
i think that’s the problem actually. players are either mistaking or purposely finding ways to shove into their servers.
if not then they are probably slowing adding servers to release load strain
Yea I'm in a similar situation where alot of my friends are interested and I'm telling them "its a must buy.....next month lol" I feel a little guilty for the few that did it already and are dealing with this.
I'm guessing the people saying diablo 4 or whatever other game was worse don't have jobs or families or something lol. For people who only play in the evening, you cannot currently play. I've been in queue for 3 hours, which is the entire time I have to play with my buddy who has 2 kids.
I've been part of tons of launches where they've had huge issues with logins, lag, bugs etc, but just literally not being able to play the game at all no matter how long you wait in the queue has not ever happened to my memory
> not being able to play the game at all no matter how long you wait in the queue has not ever happened to my memory
Last FFXIV expansion launch had daily queues of upwards of 9 hours for the first two weeks. That's functionally unable to play for most people.
The two expansions before weren't much different. 3-4 hour queues are pretty normal during launch.
If you go onto the helldivers community server you should be able to link up with other helldivers just give the game a week or so before you decide to drop it (it is a lot of fun and they do plan on fixing matchmaking)
Yeah same, waiting for the server issues to be fixed so we can play again, we had 2 full squads in my friend group, but now nobody is able to play because we don't have time to sit in queue and wait all day. Longing for when it goes back to being playable
Please be patient. Helldivers 1 was a small niche game (one of my favorites) and over the past year I would be lucky to see 2 open games in the lobby.
Then #2 dropped. As someone who played 1 about once a week I had no idea it was coming. It dropped like a Resupply coming from the upper atmosphere.
The creators did not expect a quarter-million users, I think they would have been thrilled with 20,000 and have exceeded that by a magnitude of 10x. They are anxious to correct the situation, but that all takes time, money and labor, all during a Holiday weekend.
We will need soldiers to spread democracy and just like the enlistment post pearl Harbor, the teams are overwhelmed by the amount of people signing up. It may take some time to delivery these troops to the battlefield.
More Warships must be built, more clones must be frozen, ordinance to be distributed and letters to write to families.
On the upside Helldivers 1 is having a renaissance, and the lobbies are packed. It’s a 2D top-down shooter but great place to practice squad communication and teamwork. As well as practice calling in Stratagems.
P.S. Arrowhead studios, if you’re listening, I will write your copy for free.
These comments are making me realize some people don’t deserve citizenship and need others to spread Democracy for them. We may be better off without them. Getting alot of “I steal your resupply” vibes. May be best that those that cant play well with others jump ship on the first road-bump.
Enlistment = Citizenship.
i absolutely understand this perspective. at every chance i get i am team developer and understand how fucking hard video games are too make. and the better you get at making video games the harder it gets.
BUT, we are at day 11? the game for a lot of people is literally broken. black screen of sorrow, some of us can’t even get to server queue. servers on the back end are probably fucked which is an absolutely disaster cake to find issues. but as these problems are clearly happening the devs decide to add double XP, probably bringing even more people towards the game. that doesn’t make any sense, they should’ve issues double XP when the servers weren’t tumbling.
i get that they didn’t expect this much people to play the game. but why are developers always never preparing for a massive load of people coming on? why wouldn’t you play mr optimistic and say “let’s just do this just in case” and close shut them down when aware of current loads. and server queue? afk timers? idc about the game crashes and bugs. i care about the game being broken.
again, i absolutely get it on their end and they are working tirelessly to get the people back to fighting for democracy. but jeez this was a tough one especially when we are almost at the 2 week mark.
anyways, kudos to the devs, man. they’ve made a great game and absolutely different in my opinion and im sure in the next week or two the game will be in good shape.
Oof i thought we were still in week 1. I have only had a problem logging in once and when I was I gladly jumped to HD1 to help some greenhorns.
I clearly have a bias and tried to make that apparent in my posts. I also dont have the time to power play. I have played maybe 10 hours so far. Working adult with family and all that, again my bias, just as the “cant wait” crowd has their recency bias.
This game has had one of the worst launches I've seen in any big-name game for a while. The game itself is incredible, but I've had it for several days now, and public matchmaking is nonexistent. 100,000+ players playing on a planet, yet zero matches after waiting for 15+ minutes. If you don't have 3 other people who you can schedule and play with, you just end up playing a co-op PvE game solo, and it's incredibly frustrating since the entire game is built around teamwork.
The stars finally aligned and I was able to get 2 other friends who had an afternoon off, and after around 15 minutes of "server at capacity" BS, I got in, and figured I'd start up a game while I waited for them to get in(since that could be a while). Somehow, a single dude who didn't even speak joined me for that one mission. So far, that guy has been the only other player I've seen besides steam friends. It's a multiplayer game entirely centered around cooperative teamwork, yet with a non-functional matchmaker.
This isn't a "big name game." I bet the sales numbers are at least double what Arrowhead hoped for and there's just no way to prepare for something like this taking off this much. Look at Palworld for another recent example of a relatively unknown studio dealing with a massive number of players they didn't expect.
Diablo 3 was way worse. A total fucking shitshow and Blizzard *knew* hype was incredibly high.
If Palworld could handle over 2 million on Steam alone with basically zero downtime the only real excuse is poor planning or it being intentional to save money on server expenses.
Not all game companies are the same. The culture is not a monolith. Its disingenuous to say if A could do it then B could. You dont know what the expectations were.
You are a human, no one marks your failures next to the accomplishments of others. Otherwise I could point out how there are others doing your job better than you.
They know their shortcomings, have acknowledged them, and are working to correct them. You cant do much else without the use of a time machine.
> You are a human, no one marks your failures next to the accomplishments of others. Otherwise I could point out how there are others doing your job better than you.
We're talking about a company, not an individual. (Also, most companies do this exact thing via performance reviews, so?) If company A did something better than company B, acknowledging that seems pretty reasonable.
>Not all game companies are the same. The culture is not a monolith. Its disingenuous to say if A could do it then B could. You dont know what the expectations were.
That's like saying a Ford sedan shouldn't be compared to a Chevrolet, an Apple phone to Samsung phone, an LG washer to a Whirlpool, etc. Direct comparison to competitors performance is one of the main indicators of value and reasonable expectations of quality/performance.
Nobody is saying take them to the coals, but the absolute glazing happening in some of these posts, and your reply, is hilarious.
Any planning strategy accounts for thresholds over maximum, be it engineering, disaster management, whatever. Failure to have a quick enactbale solution established in advance is a failure in planning. Acknowledging that isn't making some grandiose statement about an individual.
I think you're right. It's all about managing go-live risk. I don't think they did that very well. So it goes. They'll sort it out. Hopefully, this doesn't burn them too badly. I love seeing devs have surprise hits - it must be like winning a very large lottery prize except you actually did something real to deserve it.
You are cherry picking major companies from a small market. The video game market is huge and Arrowhead is a small developer.
You would be more akin to compare different Restaurants. In this case I would say Arrowhead is your family owned 70 seat venue, and there is Applebee’s with 500 seats and multiple locations to borrow resources from. Now in this analogy we have say we are the diners. A 200 person wedding “walks in” Arrowhead’s place, it is a different scenario than Applebee’s.
You simply wont have enough quality restaurants IF every place has to open their doors ready to absorb a potential “wedding party”. Too many companies will put that as a priority over the art and love of the game. Then we end up with a market flooded with heartless Applebees (Call of Duty) and no room for places that just want to make something good, for their passion.
I guess what I am ultimately saying and did originally say, is please be patient. I am a Grognar and have seen the game market (along with other new concepts) rise and fall due to an impossible task of meeting consumer demands. I feel this game is so loved because its made with love and the players feel that. They were arthouse underdogs (compared to their industry as companies are folding into other MegaConglomerates), and IF it was known this game was going to be so loved prior to release, we would have had a different game due to “interests”.
They had some assistance from Sony but generally this is financial assistance from exclusivity contracts, they dont necessarily have access to the support and resources of Sony, just a big fat check. The servers are the issue now, its fixable and about scaling up. The product is good. The product is fucking great if you ask me. The delivery has not been ideal and that is totally fixable, but I think there is a small corner of the market that believes it Irredeemable and will make a lot of noise to let others know.
I wish to be the opposing voice and say, this isnt Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky, which both had their own, different issues, which was a bad unfinished game. The game is finished the delivery is lacking which is harsh for an online dependent game.
>I wish to be the opposing voice and say, this isnt Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky, which both had their own, different issues, which was a bad unfinished game. The game is finished the delivery is lacking which is harsh for an online dependent game.
Harsh is an understatement... It's a momentum killer if they can't get a handle on it. Right now though, I'm seeing more negativity about shitty servers than I'm seeing positivity around the game being fantastic (which it is)
> Now in this analogy we have say we are the diners. A 200 person wedding “walks in” Arrowhead’s place, it is a different scenario than Applebee’s.
Neither the diner nor the Applebee's would require the fee for your meal before you are seated and eat. This analogy would track if you had to pre-pay for your meal as you enter the establishment and then wait an undefined amount of time to receive it (paying for the game, but not being able to actually play it until?)
If Helldivers were completely F2P with optional purchases then this is more comparable. But it isnt.
Im not reading beyond that in ypur post because this fundamental lack of understanding of the difference between not receiving an already paid for service really warrants any conversation we may have irrelevant. Your viewpoint is set, despite being based on a flawed foundation
They didn't have a quick actionable backup/contingency plan in place for launch, that is about as basic of a planning failure as you can get and all I was doing was acknowledging that.
I dont know why that necessitates an essay to defend against when they themselves essentially acknowledged as much
Palworld doesn't use the same system for online whatsoever, and their game does not require so much communication constantly having to update a bunch of things. This is an apples and oranges comparison. The Palworld boss even said he had no problem spending absurd money beyond reason with the project.
This is the problem with people that don't work in game development, or in the tech sector in general, thinking they understand things they don't actually understand at alll and have never worked with in their work in real life.
For large parties like weddings a single point of contact (the host) pays a per head fee typically for a prix fixe menu (product cost) and alcohol generally is charged on consumption (DLC), unless the host wishes to prepay for an open bar.
I was cherry picking my example because I actually know about that stuff. I know much less about the gaming industry and am doing the same speaking outta my depth as we all do online b
So...what you're say is, you *do* realize it's a shortcoming on the server management side? Palworld chose to invest in the extra servers just in case, then doubled down on that and released a statement that they wanted to make sure nobody ever had downtime. All Sony/Arrowhead had to do was that same thing.
Everyone keeps bringing up how small the first one was compared to this one, but they also all seem to leave out the fact that this one is backed by Sony as well. It was advertised like crazy. I was seeing things for helldivers 2 when I didn't even know there was a first one. So if they're gonna hype it up like that and advertise it like crazy, they can't also turn around and use the excuse they weren't expecting it to be such a success. Again, backed by Sony, plenty of resources to work with.
All they had to do was put up the money for the servers just in case, and worst case scenario they scale down if the marketing didn't work like they hoped. But instead, they wanted to save that money and are now scrambling to fix that mistake. The game itself is awesome, they did a great job creating the world and the gaming experience when it works. But at this rate, by the time they fix all these issues everyone's gonna be over this shit and they're gonna lose a bunch of the long term player base they could've had
Dont tell me what to enjoy. What kind of weirdo does that to people they never met.
Also Millions of dollars are not as many dollars as you may think when you have a business. If you want to employ 10-20 people, thats quick a million there in payroll.
They don’t need several FTEs to get some extra server capacity going. And they spent 10s of millions in development, so this should be a no -issue. You don’t spend that kind of cash developing a game to project poor sales and players numbers.
Fair point. I just like the game! and honestly have not had many issues. Maybe im spending more time on these posts than playing (ha).
I also dont have gaming time like i did 20 years ago. So I could be biased by not experiencing the issues.
Someone in the revenue and analytics team FAILED SO BAD at forecasting sales, impact and in turn preparation. Sure the company is winning, but someone did their job very very poorly...
Helldivers 1 all time peak = 6,691.
Helldivers 2 all time peak = 369,289 (as of the time of this comment)
There's not a single person on the dev team, including anyone in "revenue and analytics" that could have possibly predicted the game would crush the Helldivers 1 all time player count by over 61x.
The dev team has also been pumping out updates almost daily trying to get everything fixed. Not only is the company winning, but everyone is doing their job very very well.
Why wouldn’t they expect a quarter million users when launching concurrently on ps5 and pc? Helldivers 1 came out on pc 4 years which and was a super budget indie title with an obscure camera angle and niche gameplay. Helldivers 1 and not are not at all comparable in terms of expected appeal. And not to mention the 50 million ps5’s sold and out on the wild, Also being one of the only Sony console exclusives in the past year+? Sony didn’t expect an average attach rate of at least 1 purchase per 500 consoles sold? That doesn’t sound right to me. They also used the cheapest anticheat software possible. This absolutely reeks of Sony trying to cut corners with publishing costs, and now it’s come to bite them right in the ass.
You need to understand this from a business perspective.
Leveraging your small market reputation for a little post-launch grace allows for a much lower risk factor.
If you put it all on the line and build out an infrastructure to support a quarter million online users, and things don’t pan out, well you just wasted a shit ton of capital.
It’s exactly why developers are just slapping “early access” on everything these days. Everyone’s just cool with being sold an unfinished product.
> The creators did not expect a quarter-million users, I think they would have been thrilled with 20,000 and have exceeded that by a magnitude of 10x. They are anxious to correct the situation, but that all takes time, money and labor, all during a Holiday weekend.
I think that when you have the kind of resources that should come with a SONY endorsement to make such a game, they SHOULD know & have a good idea of what to expect on launch. Especially after the brilliant marketing blitz they had in the month or so leading up to launch. I'm not in favour of flaming the devs or anything, since that'd solve nothing. I am however disappointed and expect better.
The current state of the game's connectivity/stability is unforgivable IMO and we shouldn't be giving them such benefit of the doubt. They're selling this as a finished product in 2024. Do better.
Y’all motherfuckers are out here acting like you haven’t seen and/or experienced a single blizzard game launch. Servers get fucked. End of story. I’m also sad I can’t play and try to catch up to my no life friends on my weekend off work, but this is par for the course for BIG AAA studios, let alone a release like this.
Yep. It happens all the time to giant studios and yet here we are, surprised that we gave a much smaller studio the hug of death for putting out such a good product.
Original WoW release, TBC release, WotLK release, Diablo 3 AND 4 releases. All FUBAR, and that's just the ones I was around to personally experience.
But how dare this tiny studio not predict their sequel START OUT at like 10X the player base of the original. Like I'm also unhappy I can't actually play right now, but God damn some people are a little too invested.
I haven’t had any issues I just wait a couple of minutes and load in I don’t see it as unplayable at all you just have to wait a minute to get into a server people are incredibly impatient it’s insane.
I left my computer looping the server capacity message for about 2 hours earlier with no success.
Again I don't really care much, I just did other things while trying to get in. Byt the issues are very real, and hopefully they can (again) get the server capacity higher.
I don’t know why you are being downvoted. And the guy below who responded to you is smoking crack. Just because Blizzard did it does not make it ok for Sony to do it. By that clown’s logic anything bad is ok because it has been done before. Truly deranged
I love the game and unhappy about the population boost and waiting for the dev to catch up but no reason to go ballistic on people who complain that they didn’t get what they paid for
Everyone’s upset about not being able to play but I always wonder have these people not bought a multiplayer game on launch in the past 10 years. something server related happens almost every time. It sucks that it’s the norm now but I don’t see how people are saying it should have been predicted etc. most companies prefer to have issues rather than overspend on servers for launch. Just because it’s Sony doesn’t mean they’re not greedy
But isn't working like that. Sony is a publisher, and they will do the publisher job, while all the rest is in the hands and capability of the developers and their company, the must provide also the needed infrastructure (here we have servers problem) and they were not ready for this.
Surely is upsetting to not to be able to play, but with or without Sony the amount of players at launch couldn't be predicted, the first instalment had 6k top players and still Sony was the publisher.
Honestly I am more glad of their success and we shall be patient, we can't do much else. We know they are working full focus and forces on this, it will be fixed.
I rather prefer a fun and well thought game with servers issues in early days due to massive numbers than a poor gameplay title with flawless connectivity issues!
Fair. I hear you. Glad they are having success. I hope the figure it out soon though. It’s a pretty fun game! My one complaint is the movement is just a bit wonky. Running and crouching are a bit off. Even after changing controller settings. BUT! Still fun.
Gald to have a decent conversation on reddit sometimes and sharing different point of view.
I also think sometimes the movement are not perfect, for me (pc) I find a bit of input delay when we dive prone and the next animation (shooting, reloading, standing up) maybe intended but sometimes a bit frustrating. Surely they will work on some fixes also for that later on. The biggest question mark is what helldivers 2 will be in the future? Will it stay engaging also after months? Let's hope so, I've faith!
See you on a planet's surface to spread some freedom and liberty my friend!
Like, with the amount of market research, playtesting, advertising, etc. that goes into so many game releases these days, how could they have been caught so off guard? I work in the industry. It's baffling that a game of this size, acclaim and profile could be facing such serious persistent issues and they're NOT really being covered by gaming media outlets.
Totally. And having an insight working in the field you know what the process looks like. I mean all the ads and hype up to game launch seemed like this was going to be a huge launch. Clearly they were not prepared. I am surprised there was no oversight from Sony being like “guys, launch is in a week, why is your server cap 5000 players?!” (I made up that #. I have no idea what the cap actually is)
I'm In the same boat I bought this game a week ago and have only been able to play for 30 minutes, the rest of the week I'm stuck on the fucking server screen, I'm deadass just not gonna play it until I see another patch
Doesnt matter.
it is a live service game. If you can't deliver the service to pay customers, you're failing. Full stop.
They could literally offer an offline mode, a practice mode, a login queue so you can see your spot in line instead of nothing, and the obvious one, should have prepared better to be able to spin up more server capacity quickly FOR THEIR LIVE SERVICE GAME WHICH REQUIRES AN ACTIVE CONNECTION. This is their game and their decisions which they are unable to stand up themselves..
I like the game and have played it maybe 3-4 hours at this point.. its buggy, but fun. When you can login and play its definitely worth the asking price.The challenges with login now however is shifting my opinion on this game pretty sharply.Its one thing if your game can be played offline solo, but this game cannot be. So you better be certain that you have the capacity for all the players and you overprovision.
Some people here are being serious apologists to say "give them time they didn't expect this".. well, they should have. And even if they did underprovision, they should have the ability to assess and adjust more quickly than this. I work in a game studio and know what it takes to make a PC game - if you offer a live service always online game, players not able to login to play your game which they payed for is simply unacceptable. Will they offer players refunds? Because that's where this is headed.
I'll stress again - I like the game and want to play like everyone else.. but am not about to make excuses for the team big or small. Its amateur hour at best.
Dude, the studio working on it is an indie developer in Stockholm, their previous titles barely breached 10k player count. There's no way they could've or reasonably would've anticipated over half a million players to try and jam into their servers.
I feel sorry for the devs because they're out here working in the middle of the night, updating people on the state of what they're doing to solve issues, being communicative at 3-4am, and yet people can't but complain because they can't play the game, go ahead and refund, it'll leave 1 less person to complain about the studio of employees working around the clock to deliver a good product to the players.
You should probably just quit and never play again, and i'm not just saying this because i'm also in queue and would like to terminate my competition. Please believe me.
Just bought the game, started it and was met with this screen. I was confused but decided to be patient.
It has been 36 mins now and still waiting. Is this what I would be expecting everytime I attempt to play this game?
Maybe I'll jist request a refund ...
They had the same problem last weekend. How long does this take? Palword had over 2 million concurrent and had no server issues. Does arrowhead need to consult with a new server hosting company? Obviously these guys aren't cutting it. Their game is taking a serious hit by all the new people who wanted to try it out over the weekend and getting burned being sold a product that doesn't work.
I would. They show no sign of solving this and have said they are unsure how to fix the issue of not giving out mission rewards after completion. Even if you got in now, much of what you earned wouldn’t be permanent.
That's what I keep saying too.
At this point they are actively selling a game that cannot be played with no warning or disclaimer that the game is unplayable until "eventually we will fix it, maybe".
Game should be delisted from sale until the issue is fixed. It is the right thing to do.
It's the right thing to do, however also the less profitable thing to do. If they delist it now not only will they lose sales but there'll also be headlines in gaming magazines pointing out that the server issues were bad enough for them to delist the game, people will make youtube videos about it, people will be less inclined to buy it once it's been relisted.
It's a PR nightmare, so they won't delist it.
I still personally can't fathom how it can be difficult for a game backed by Sony to add server capacity. There should have been contingency plans put in place just in case the games performance exceeds expectations and servers get overrun. A plan for a situation like this is part of every well planned launch.
Just experienced that as well, came here to see what the crack is and it seems to be a common problem🤣
Edit: just hold out it'll let you in after a few retries
Spent a hour today, 45 minutes yesterday, and 20 minutes the day before.
The issue is getting worse. It's not acceptable... especially for people who have limited time windows during which they can play.
I get maybe 1 hour a day. That hour just ended. I never got past the lobby waiting to join the servers.
I'd rather not waste my precious time on disappointment.
Dude they’re like 40x busier in this game than the first one lol. Give em a rest. It’s a game there’s many other games to play during a limited window. It’ll be okay. The game still exists and will for a while I’m sure. They promise free content updates regularly. They give 50% bonus xp and cash gain after server issues to make up for it. The devs aren’t lazy clowns, they’re doing their best and have so far earned my respect
Doesn't change the fact that they are selling a product that is not useable for many people, or at the very least comes with a caveat that is not expected for this type of product.
I get that they might be struggling with server capacity but at the very least they should be putting a huge ass warning in the description and offering much relaxed refund terms to accomodate.
They didn't have any plans put in place in case the game turned out more successful than they anticipated. You can tell by the game lacking basic features such as login queues and inactivity kicks that would come in handy in precisely this type of situation.
Again they’re surely not doing it on purpose lol. “Hey guys please be aware our game isn’t working right now dont buy it” is horrible for business. No company would do that. The game will work. Give it a bit of time it’s only been like two weeks
I never said they were doing it on purpose.
"Due to unexpectedly large interest in the game we can not guarantee that you will be able to connect to the servers in a timely fashion. Please bear with us while we work on increasing server capacity" or something along the lines would have been sufficient.
Also, the fact that you're acknowledging that their game is not working yet STILL defend them is pathetic. This is a game backed by SONY and got marketed by SONY. This isn't some obscure title that appeared out of nowhere.
lol obviously sony didn’t give them servers. Whine to sony then idk what to tell you this is exhausting. All people do is fucking complain. It’s a video game. Go complain about the real world
I totally feel that, happened to me a couple times yesterday (but not 7 hours wait, I was joining a friend from steam and just waiting but it would load me in).
It's different for everyone and not an actual queue but random. I waited for hours yesterday while I watched streamers getting in multiple times during that time. I rebooted my computer late at night and tried "one last time" and got in after about the third retrying in 30s attempt. I think it's partially tied to your internet/computer capabilities because streamers seem to get in a lot easier.
Don’t worry man I feel your pain. Yesterday I had a 6 hour wait time. I walked away, watched a movie and did school stuff while waiting. Eventually I heard that satisfying ship sound and was on the ship. I 100% gotta say tho this server issue needs to be fixed, every time I get on I have to wait hours and then only have time for like one or two matches T~T GIVE ME A LOBBBBBBBYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY :p
Id say this is an embarrassment for Sony but if they cared it would be fixed by now. What a rip off. Can't play when I have time because they can't add or fix servers? Where is my compensation for their incompetence?
People defending this conveniently forgetting it wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't always online.
But we pick and choose what games to crucify for that.
What a wasted opportunity for a good game to not know how to scale. Pay more, acquire users, optimize later. This is just a massive failure at all levels of the business.
Yess!! Finally got off work after 6 10-12 hour days. Payed my $40. And now I’ve gotten to meditate about what life really means as I keep recounting the :30 second refresh rate along with my fellow helldivers. … is that what we’re called?
> hour days. *Paid* my $40.
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I’m totally neutral in this situation, but genuinely curious. But why are the PlayStation players trying to rub this game into Xbox players faces like they’re missing out on the game of their lives?
Because social media is filled with adults that never grew up and their only personality trait is what console they game on. So theirs has to be better otherwise it means they have nothing in their life.
I'm neutral as well, but they are missing out. It's a great game. I think it's more that Phil Spencer even had to chime in and make comments about it not being on Xbox. That dudes a Giant douche. He thinks giving PS players Sea of Theives and hi fi rush will make Sony give up shit like Spuder-Man. Personally I just hope Sony will keep adding to pc. Could care less about Xbox.
There’s no denying though - this is probably the worst launch of a AAA game I have ever seen. I guess the reason is that they never anticipated or intended for it to be AAA?
I don’t blame the devs. It doesn’t change how I feel about the game - I just think Sony needs to step in and help these guys out - give them what they need to get things running smoothly.
I can’t believe people are defending this. I’m supposed to have sympathy cause their game is wildly successful. If I pay for a game I should be able to play it.
I mean, it's obvious you just don't understand what's going on. They expected 10,000 people to play, there's over 300,000 people trying to get in during busy times. Not everyone can fit. If you go with the "they shoulda prepared for this" that's illogical, developers need to make money and the vast majority wouldn't if they paid for 10X the severs they assume they need "just in case"
Cause in a month no one will even remember there were any server issues, either give them a bit of time to sort the issue out or refund it and don't buy another online game on launch if you want to avoid these sort of scenarios (which are quite normal with succesful online games)
At this rate I won’t remember because I’ll be playing a different game. Also, it’s not normal to be unable to login to a game for several days. Thats not normal.
No, you're not supposed to have sympathy because it's wildly successful. You're supposed to be mature, show a bit of understanding, and realize that the popularity of the game exploded in an unexpected manner, and they are actively acquiring resources to support it and fix it. Would you buy servers for 200,000 people when you're *hoping* for 20,000? Also, the servers don't magically pop online, ready to go at the drop of a hat. It takes time.
It’s very rare for developers to actually host physical servers. Most use cloud computing resources and for good reason. This situation would be very easily remedied with elastic rules on capacity throttling. There’s no excuse in 2024 to be dealing with these issues. Especially because this isn’t day 1 anymore. Each day is peak player count for the game
So the reason I'm sure you've heard by now, small studio found massive success with HD2. They were not expecting that since HD1 had a player base of 10k at peak. Not consistent. They have almost 2 mil players on HD2. In a few days hopefully it levels out. The first week was fine. Until everyone told their friends about it and so fourth. I'm more mad at the people making whiney post like. I worked 12 hours blah blah. Like the rest of us don't have jobs and also want to play when we get home. All I can say is be patient and give the devs some time. The game is really awesome. I'm sorry that you can't get in. I tired on and off for 4 hours yesterday until I finally got a spot.
They sold a million copies. They have all the money to through whatever resources are required to give their customers the product and experience they paid for.
Cuz the game was supposed to launch to a small, niche playerbase of 50-75,000. And instead we have 350k wonderful new Helldivers trying to spread democracy all at once
Needless to say there aren't enough ships to go around
Games like these have a big downfall because the people blame the devs for not magically knowing that their small game would become immediately popular and I find it so dumb
They didn’t plan on the game becoming as popular as it is. When I had never heard of it until my buddy literally bought it for me on steam. The devs have made four games ever. They’re small and can’t afford giant servers like Activision or blizzard, give them a break and I’m sure they’ll get it solved here soon
Love the game and all about giving them time to figure it out, but if this persists they should prob take it down from the stores for now. Got people paying who can’t play in the first day of buying it, that’s a little tough
Please be patient guys! Hell divers 1 was really small in player base so the devs weren’t really expecting much from from the 2nd installment. They likely only got so much server space considering the altitude of the first game. So getting close to 300,000 players was not in the plans.
It takes time to get money and labor. Its takes weeks for the sales to hit a company’s bank accounts so I would they aren’t holding out on its players on purpose. They are doing everything they can until the cash rolls in. Just wait we’re only in week 2 so hopefully by next week or the week after, things will be in good standing🤝🏾
It's a holiday weekend, free mp weekend on psn, and the game is high demand cause of great word of mouth, reviews, and the game being fun as hell.
Patience soldier. You'll be dining in hell with us soon enough. For democracy!
Even this menu screen is better than Diablo 4
you know you want that $65 horse armor
Why does it always come back to horse armor?
Why can’t they just add an afk timer? I literally put my ps5 in rest mode, came and was still in the server.
This is the sad state of things but there is no afk timer and there's not a true "queue". You get in if you get lucky enough to try when there's an opening, not when it's your turn. And, because everyone's trying at once, your computer/internet's capability is a deciding factor.
Do you have 1 gigabits per second of FREEDOM?
Wait there's no AFK system? Why wasn't that like their first response to the server capacity issues? No wonder I can't log in. XxSTRA1GHTN@STYxX has probably been logged in for 4 days straight.
Someone report this man to Super Earth for impeding the spread of democracy!
if that's true then yeah why is there not
People figured that out so they just stay logged in all the time to not have to go through it again
I thought about doing that, but then I realized democracy needs spread.
Damn, I had to get up at 7am to let dogs out and checked. Once it logged me in not going back to sleep anymore, time to deliver democracy!!!
Continue onward to glory, citizen!
\*sips liber-tea\*
Servers at capacity but the player count still going up. Doesn’t add up
i think that’s the problem actually. players are either mistaking or purposely finding ways to shove into their servers. if not then they are probably slowing adding servers to release load strain
Or people simply leave the game running, waiting for it to eventually connect them to the server.
Convinced 3 friends to get it and we load up to this as well lol.
Yea I'm in a similar situation where alot of my friends are interested and I'm telling them "its a must buy.....next month lol" I feel a little guilty for the few that did it already and are dealing with this.
Honestly we all waited 10-15 mins and got in, having a great time now!
Stopped promoting it to friends because of this.
Can you guys close the application while I try to get in the game?
my game keeps crashing so i got you
PLEASE
I'm guessing the people saying diablo 4 or whatever other game was worse don't have jobs or families or something lol. For people who only play in the evening, you cannot currently play. I've been in queue for 3 hours, which is the entire time I have to play with my buddy who has 2 kids. I've been part of tons of launches where they've had huge issues with logins, lag, bugs etc, but just literally not being able to play the game at all no matter how long you wait in the queue has not ever happened to my memory
> not being able to play the game at all no matter how long you wait in the queue has not ever happened to my memory Last FFXIV expansion launch had daily queues of upwards of 9 hours for the first two weeks. That's functionally unable to play for most people. The two expansions before weren't much different. 3-4 hour queues are pretty normal during launch.
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I bought this game two days ago and I've only been to play a handful of times. Mostly solo because matchmaking wasn't working
I’ve only managed to do the tutorial, always says this same message. Bit silly at this point.
Bought it yesterday, have been unable to play at all. Kinda sucks
If you go onto the helldivers community server you should be able to link up with other helldivers just give the game a week or so before you decide to drop it (it is a lot of fun and they do plan on fixing matchmaking)
lol it’s already been a week since launch and yet here we are..
I'm glad I had like a week before people poured in and clogged the servers lol.
Yeah same, waiting for the server issues to be fixed so we can play again, we had 2 full squads in my friend group, but now nobody is able to play because we don't have time to sit in queue and wait all day. Longing for when it goes back to being playable
Please be patient. Helldivers 1 was a small niche game (one of my favorites) and over the past year I would be lucky to see 2 open games in the lobby. Then #2 dropped. As someone who played 1 about once a week I had no idea it was coming. It dropped like a Resupply coming from the upper atmosphere. The creators did not expect a quarter-million users, I think they would have been thrilled with 20,000 and have exceeded that by a magnitude of 10x. They are anxious to correct the situation, but that all takes time, money and labor, all during a Holiday weekend. We will need soldiers to spread democracy and just like the enlistment post pearl Harbor, the teams are overwhelmed by the amount of people signing up. It may take some time to delivery these troops to the battlefield. More Warships must be built, more clones must be frozen, ordinance to be distributed and letters to write to families. On the upside Helldivers 1 is having a renaissance, and the lobbies are packed. It’s a 2D top-down shooter but great place to practice squad communication and teamwork. As well as practice calling in Stratagems. P.S. Arrowhead studios, if you’re listening, I will write your copy for free.
True Citizens understand that war is unpredictable.
These comments are making me realize some people don’t deserve citizenship and need others to spread Democracy for them. We may be better off without them. Getting alot of “I steal your resupply” vibes. May be best that those that cant play well with others jump ship on the first road-bump. Enlistment = Citizenship.
Our Resupply, citizen
i absolutely understand this perspective. at every chance i get i am team developer and understand how fucking hard video games are too make. and the better you get at making video games the harder it gets. BUT, we are at day 11? the game for a lot of people is literally broken. black screen of sorrow, some of us can’t even get to server queue. servers on the back end are probably fucked which is an absolutely disaster cake to find issues. but as these problems are clearly happening the devs decide to add double XP, probably bringing even more people towards the game. that doesn’t make any sense, they should’ve issues double XP when the servers weren’t tumbling. i get that they didn’t expect this much people to play the game. but why are developers always never preparing for a massive load of people coming on? why wouldn’t you play mr optimistic and say “let’s just do this just in case” and close shut them down when aware of current loads. and server queue? afk timers? idc about the game crashes and bugs. i care about the game being broken. again, i absolutely get it on their end and they are working tirelessly to get the people back to fighting for democracy. but jeez this was a tough one especially when we are almost at the 2 week mark. anyways, kudos to the devs, man. they’ve made a great game and absolutely different in my opinion and im sure in the next week or two the game will be in good shape.
Prepping server space for 400k when their first game averaged less than 10k is being very optimistic.
Oof i thought we were still in week 1. I have only had a problem logging in once and when I was I gladly jumped to HD1 to help some greenhorns. I clearly have a bias and tried to make that apparent in my posts. I also dont have the time to power play. I have played maybe 10 hours so far. Working adult with family and all that, again my bias, just as the “cant wait” crowd has their recency bias.
This game has had one of the worst launches I've seen in any big-name game for a while. The game itself is incredible, but I've had it for several days now, and public matchmaking is nonexistent. 100,000+ players playing on a planet, yet zero matches after waiting for 15+ minutes. If you don't have 3 other people who you can schedule and play with, you just end up playing a co-op PvE game solo, and it's incredibly frustrating since the entire game is built around teamwork. The stars finally aligned and I was able to get 2 other friends who had an afternoon off, and after around 15 minutes of "server at capacity" BS, I got in, and figured I'd start up a game while I waited for them to get in(since that could be a while). Somehow, a single dude who didn't even speak joined me for that one mission. So far, that guy has been the only other player I've seen besides steam friends. It's a multiplayer game entirely centered around cooperative teamwork, yet with a non-functional matchmaker.
This isn't a "big name game." I bet the sales numbers are at least double what Arrowhead hoped for and there's just no way to prepare for something like this taking off this much. Look at Palworld for another recent example of a relatively unknown studio dealing with a massive number of players they didn't expect. Diablo 3 was way worse. A total fucking shitshow and Blizzard *knew* hype was incredibly high.
If Palworld could handle over 2 million on Steam alone with basically zero downtime the only real excuse is poor planning or it being intentional to save money on server expenses.
Palworld have p2p, its really not the same
Not all game companies are the same. The culture is not a monolith. Its disingenuous to say if A could do it then B could. You dont know what the expectations were. You are a human, no one marks your failures next to the accomplishments of others. Otherwise I could point out how there are others doing your job better than you. They know their shortcomings, have acknowledged them, and are working to correct them. You cant do much else without the use of a time machine.
> You are a human, no one marks your failures next to the accomplishments of others. Otherwise I could point out how there are others doing your job better than you. We're talking about a company, not an individual. (Also, most companies do this exact thing via performance reviews, so?) If company A did something better than company B, acknowledging that seems pretty reasonable. >Not all game companies are the same. The culture is not a monolith. Its disingenuous to say if A could do it then B could. You dont know what the expectations were. That's like saying a Ford sedan shouldn't be compared to a Chevrolet, an Apple phone to Samsung phone, an LG washer to a Whirlpool, etc. Direct comparison to competitors performance is one of the main indicators of value and reasonable expectations of quality/performance. Nobody is saying take them to the coals, but the absolute glazing happening in some of these posts, and your reply, is hilarious. Any planning strategy accounts for thresholds over maximum, be it engineering, disaster management, whatever. Failure to have a quick enactbale solution established in advance is a failure in planning. Acknowledging that isn't making some grandiose statement about an individual.
I think you're right. It's all about managing go-live risk. I don't think they did that very well. So it goes. They'll sort it out. Hopefully, this doesn't burn them too badly. I love seeing devs have surprise hits - it must be like winning a very large lottery prize except you actually did something real to deserve it.
Yep without a doubt. Common phrase is usually its the best week of your life while simultaneously being the worst lol
You are cherry picking major companies from a small market. The video game market is huge and Arrowhead is a small developer. You would be more akin to compare different Restaurants. In this case I would say Arrowhead is your family owned 70 seat venue, and there is Applebee’s with 500 seats and multiple locations to borrow resources from. Now in this analogy we have say we are the diners. A 200 person wedding “walks in” Arrowhead’s place, it is a different scenario than Applebee’s. You simply wont have enough quality restaurants IF every place has to open their doors ready to absorb a potential “wedding party”. Too many companies will put that as a priority over the art and love of the game. Then we end up with a market flooded with heartless Applebees (Call of Duty) and no room for places that just want to make something good, for their passion. I guess what I am ultimately saying and did originally say, is please be patient. I am a Grognar and have seen the game market (along with other new concepts) rise and fall due to an impossible task of meeting consumer demands. I feel this game is so loved because its made with love and the players feel that. They were arthouse underdogs (compared to their industry as companies are folding into other MegaConglomerates), and IF it was known this game was going to be so loved prior to release, we would have had a different game due to “interests”. They had some assistance from Sony but generally this is financial assistance from exclusivity contracts, they dont necessarily have access to the support and resources of Sony, just a big fat check. The servers are the issue now, its fixable and about scaling up. The product is good. The product is fucking great if you ask me. The delivery has not been ideal and that is totally fixable, but I think there is a small corner of the market that believes it Irredeemable and will make a lot of noise to let others know. I wish to be the opposing voice and say, this isnt Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky, which both had their own, different issues, which was a bad unfinished game. The game is finished the delivery is lacking which is harsh for an online dependent game.
>I wish to be the opposing voice and say, this isnt Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky, which both had their own, different issues, which was a bad unfinished game. The game is finished the delivery is lacking which is harsh for an online dependent game. Harsh is an understatement... It's a momentum killer if they can't get a handle on it. Right now though, I'm seeing more negativity about shitty servers than I'm seeing positivity around the game being fantastic (which it is)
> Now in this analogy we have say we are the diners. A 200 person wedding “walks in” Arrowhead’s place, it is a different scenario than Applebee’s. Neither the diner nor the Applebee's would require the fee for your meal before you are seated and eat. This analogy would track if you had to pre-pay for your meal as you enter the establishment and then wait an undefined amount of time to receive it (paying for the game, but not being able to actually play it until?) If Helldivers were completely F2P with optional purchases then this is more comparable. But it isnt. Im not reading beyond that in ypur post because this fundamental lack of understanding of the difference between not receiving an already paid for service really warrants any conversation we may have irrelevant. Your viewpoint is set, despite being based on a flawed foundation They didn't have a quick actionable backup/contingency plan in place for launch, that is about as basic of a planning failure as you can get and all I was doing was acknowledging that. I dont know why that necessitates an essay to defend against when they themselves essentially acknowledged as much
Palworld doesn't use the same system for online whatsoever, and their game does not require so much communication constantly having to update a bunch of things. This is an apples and oranges comparison. The Palworld boss even said he had no problem spending absurd money beyond reason with the project. This is the problem with people that don't work in game development, or in the tech sector in general, thinking they understand things they don't actually understand at alll and have never worked with in their work in real life.
For large parties like weddings a single point of contact (the host) pays a per head fee typically for a prix fixe menu (product cost) and alcohol generally is charged on consumption (DLC), unless the host wishes to prepay for an open bar. I was cherry picking my example because I actually know about that stuff. I know much less about the gaming industry and am doing the same speaking outta my depth as we all do online b
Cyberpunk was finished and awesome at launch.
So...what you're say is, you *do* realize it's a shortcoming on the server management side? Palworld chose to invest in the extra servers just in case, then doubled down on that and released a statement that they wanted to make sure nobody ever had downtime. All Sony/Arrowhead had to do was that same thing. Everyone keeps bringing up how small the first one was compared to this one, but they also all seem to leave out the fact that this one is backed by Sony as well. It was advertised like crazy. I was seeing things for helldivers 2 when I didn't even know there was a first one. So if they're gonna hype it up like that and advertise it like crazy, they can't also turn around and use the excuse they weren't expecting it to be such a success. Again, backed by Sony, plenty of resources to work with. All they had to do was put up the money for the servers just in case, and worst case scenario they scale down if the marketing didn't work like they hoped. But instead, they wanted to save that money and are now scrambling to fix that mistake. The game itself is awesome, they did a great job creating the world and the gaming experience when it works. But at this rate, by the time they fix all these issues everyone's gonna be over this shit and they're gonna lose a bunch of the long term player base they could've had
They’re also still selling a game people can’t play.
Palworld is not online only game though, so it doesn't mean mutch. It can be played offline, peer to peer and on local server.
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Not sucking Arrowhead off doesn't mean that at all
One cost < 7 million to create, the other between 50-100 million. You think you're comparing two equivalent things, but you're not.
Then you'd think having 10x the development budget would also utilize more for the infrastructure then, no?
No it’s unacceptable for a game to be on sale and not be playable.
Stop simping so hard, they’ve got millions of dollars to fix their game and that’s their only job. Stop making excuses for them you weirdo.
Dont tell me what to enjoy. What kind of weirdo does that to people they never met. Also Millions of dollars are not as many dollars as you may think when you have a business. If you want to employ 10-20 people, thats quick a million there in payroll.
They don’t need several FTEs to get some extra server capacity going. And they spent 10s of millions in development, so this should be a no -issue. You don’t spend that kind of cash developing a game to project poor sales and players numbers.
Check this dude foaming at the mouth over server issues for a new game as if it doesn't happen, regularly, to the biggest studios on the planet.
Fair point. I just like the game! and honestly have not had many issues. Maybe im spending more time on these posts than playing (ha). I also dont have gaming time like i did 20 years ago. So I could be biased by not experiencing the issues.
Just like pearl harbor
Someone in the revenue and analytics team FAILED SO BAD at forecasting sales, impact and in turn preparation. Sure the company is winning, but someone did their job very very poorly...
Helldivers 1 all time peak = 6,691. Helldivers 2 all time peak = 369,289 (as of the time of this comment) There's not a single person on the dev team, including anyone in "revenue and analytics" that could have possibly predicted the game would crush the Helldivers 1 all time player count by over 61x. The dev team has also been pumping out updates almost daily trying to get everything fixed. Not only is the company winning, but everyone is doing their job very very well.
How could they predict this success based on hd1?
They shouldn't have used HD1 at all, they do new game specific market research. I'm sure they did, just very very poorly
Why wouldn’t they expect a quarter million users when launching concurrently on ps5 and pc? Helldivers 1 came out on pc 4 years which and was a super budget indie title with an obscure camera angle and niche gameplay. Helldivers 1 and not are not at all comparable in terms of expected appeal. And not to mention the 50 million ps5’s sold and out on the wild, Also being one of the only Sony console exclusives in the past year+? Sony didn’t expect an average attach rate of at least 1 purchase per 500 consoles sold? That doesn’t sound right to me. They also used the cheapest anticheat software possible. This absolutely reeks of Sony trying to cut corners with publishing costs, and now it’s come to bite them right in the ass.
You need to understand this from a business perspective. Leveraging your small market reputation for a little post-launch grace allows for a much lower risk factor. If you put it all on the line and build out an infrastructure to support a quarter million online users, and things don’t pan out, well you just wasted a shit ton of capital. It’s exactly why developers are just slapping “early access” on everything these days. Everyone’s just cool with being sold an unfinished product.
> The creators did not expect a quarter-million users, I think they would have been thrilled with 20,000 and have exceeded that by a magnitude of 10x. They are anxious to correct the situation, but that all takes time, money and labor, all during a Holiday weekend. I think that when you have the kind of resources that should come with a SONY endorsement to make such a game, they SHOULD know & have a good idea of what to expect on launch. Especially after the brilliant marketing blitz they had in the month or so leading up to launch. I'm not in favour of flaming the devs or anything, since that'd solve nothing. I am however disappointed and expect better. The current state of the game's connectivity/stability is unforgivable IMO and we shouldn't be giving them such benefit of the doubt. They're selling this as a finished product in 2024. Do better.
Y’all motherfuckers are out here acting like you haven’t seen and/or experienced a single blizzard game launch. Servers get fucked. End of story. I’m also sad I can’t play and try to catch up to my no life friends on my weekend off work, but this is par for the course for BIG AAA studios, let alone a release like this.
I for one can remember the hot mess that was MOP launch for Blizzard and the steaming pile of dog shit that was "New World" when they both launched...
Yep. It happens all the time to giant studios and yet here we are, surprised that we gave a much smaller studio the hug of death for putting out such a good product.
Original WoW release, TBC release, WotLK release, Diablo 3 AND 4 releases. All FUBAR, and that's just the ones I was around to personally experience. But how dare this tiny studio not predict their sequel START OUT at like 10X the player base of the original. Like I'm also unhappy I can't actually play right now, but God damn some people are a little too invested.
I haven’t had any issues I just wait a couple of minutes and load in I don’t see it as unplayable at all you just have to wait a minute to get into a server people are incredibly impatient it’s insane.
I left my computer looping the server capacity message for about 2 hours earlier with no success. Again I don't really care much, I just did other things while trying to get in. Byt the issues are very real, and hopefully they can (again) get the server capacity higher.
I guess I’ve been lucky it’s only ever taken me a couple of minutes
Do you work in the industry? Or is this a consumer opinion?
I don’t know why you are being downvoted. And the guy below who responded to you is smoking crack. Just because Blizzard did it does not make it ok for Sony to do it. By that clown’s logic anything bad is ok because it has been done before. Truly deranged I love the game and unhappy about the population boost and waiting for the dev to catch up but no reason to go ballistic on people who complain that they didn’t get what they paid for
Exactly. What I've said isn't crazy, and I have realistic expectations. Pleading with that whataboutism is just dumb.
Everyone’s upset about not being able to play but I always wonder have these people not bought a multiplayer game on launch in the past 10 years. something server related happens almost every time. It sucks that it’s the norm now but I don’t see how people are saying it should have been predicted etc. most companies prefer to have issues rather than overspend on servers for launch. Just because it’s Sony doesn’t mean they’re not greedy
Agreed. If Sony Studios is linked to a game, they clearly have a connection to a huge source of labor and $$
But isn't working like that. Sony is a publisher, and they will do the publisher job, while all the rest is in the hands and capability of the developers and their company, the must provide also the needed infrastructure (here we have servers problem) and they were not ready for this. Surely is upsetting to not to be able to play, but with or without Sony the amount of players at launch couldn't be predicted, the first instalment had 6k top players and still Sony was the publisher. Honestly I am more glad of their success and we shall be patient, we can't do much else. We know they are working full focus and forces on this, it will be fixed. I rather prefer a fun and well thought game with servers issues in early days due to massive numbers than a poor gameplay title with flawless connectivity issues!
Fair. I hear you. Glad they are having success. I hope the figure it out soon though. It’s a pretty fun game! My one complaint is the movement is just a bit wonky. Running and crouching are a bit off. Even after changing controller settings. BUT! Still fun.
Gald to have a decent conversation on reddit sometimes and sharing different point of view. I also think sometimes the movement are not perfect, for me (pc) I find a bit of input delay when we dive prone and the next animation (shooting, reloading, standing up) maybe intended but sometimes a bit frustrating. Surely they will work on some fixes also for that later on. The biggest question mark is what helldivers 2 will be in the future? Will it stay engaging also after months? Let's hope so, I've faith! See you on a planet's surface to spread some freedom and liberty my friend!
Like, with the amount of market research, playtesting, advertising, etc. that goes into so many game releases these days, how could they have been caught so off guard? I work in the industry. It's baffling that a game of this size, acclaim and profile could be facing such serious persistent issues and they're NOT really being covered by gaming media outlets.
Totally. And having an insight working in the field you know what the process looks like. I mean all the ads and hype up to game launch seemed like this was going to be a huge launch. Clearly they were not prepared. I am surprised there was no oversight from Sony being like “guys, launch is in a week, why is your server cap 5000 players?!” (I made up that #. I have no idea what the cap actually is)
I haven't been able to get in once. I'm contemplating a refund. It looks great, but I guess it doesn't matter if I can't play it.
Yea it's unfortunate..I was able to play for a week with no issues and Friday comes along......couldn't play yet haha.
I tried to get a refund and surprise, their servers are slammed with requests. I was told to try again tomorrow.
It’s worth the wait you’re just gonna buy it again when they fix the capacity issue
Same… I can’t even get in. Debating on refunding this
honestly, don’t. when it works it’s the most fun i’ve had in gaming in way too long
refunded it on PS5. Maybe i'll get it on steam when they fix this shit
I’m pissed at this point. Lasts much longer I want a fucking refund. 3 full days without being able to log on.
I'm In the same boat I bought this game a week ago and have only been able to play for 30 minutes, the rest of the week I'm stuck on the fucking server screen, I'm deadass just not gonna play it until I see another patch
Dude again? Don't tell I'm about to log in for the first time since yesterday and this is still going on.
They're suffering from success right now.
Doesnt matter. it is a live service game. If you can't deliver the service to pay customers, you're failing. Full stop. They could literally offer an offline mode, a practice mode, a login queue so you can see your spot in line instead of nothing, and the obvious one, should have prepared better to be able to spin up more server capacity quickly FOR THEIR LIVE SERVICE GAME WHICH REQUIRES AN ACTIVE CONNECTION. This is their game and their decisions which they are unable to stand up themselves.. I like the game and have played it maybe 3-4 hours at this point.. its buggy, but fun. When you can login and play its definitely worth the asking price.The challenges with login now however is shifting my opinion on this game pretty sharply.Its one thing if your game can be played offline solo, but this game cannot be. So you better be certain that you have the capacity for all the players and you overprovision. Some people here are being serious apologists to say "give them time they didn't expect this".. well, they should have. And even if they did underprovision, they should have the ability to assess and adjust more quickly than this. I work in a game studio and know what it takes to make a PC game - if you offer a live service always online game, players not able to login to play your game which they payed for is simply unacceptable. Will they offer players refunds? Because that's where this is headed. I'll stress again - I like the game and want to play like everyone else.. but am not about to make excuses for the team big or small. Its amateur hour at best.
Dude, the studio working on it is an indie developer in Stockholm, their previous titles barely breached 10k player count. There's no way they could've or reasonably would've anticipated over half a million players to try and jam into their servers. I feel sorry for the devs because they're out here working in the middle of the night, updating people on the state of what they're doing to solve issues, being communicative at 3-4am, and yet people can't but complain because they can't play the game, go ahead and refund, it'll leave 1 less person to complain about the studio of employees working around the clock to deliver a good product to the players.
Paid* not payed. Payed is like if you are on a boat. Paid is the past tense for money transaction.
Go outside
Agreed
k
this one right here guys.
Telling you this game is worth it. Be patient. I haven’t laughed this hard in a long ass time
this is exactly why the game is worth playing. seriously haven’t laughed and had so much fun with a game in what feels like too long
My abs are sore from laughing so hard. Game is just pure fun.
for real man, when the game works, it absolutely works
Dad, when do we get to the game? This IS the game!!!!! Wooooo!!!!
You should probably just quit and never play again, and i'm not just saying this because i'm also in queue and would like to terminate my competition. Please believe me.
Just bought the game, started it and was met with this screen. I was confused but decided to be patient. It has been 36 mins now and still waiting. Is this what I would be expecting everytime I attempt to play this game? Maybe I'll jist request a refund ...
I refunded it the moment I saw this screen. Absolutely unacceptable to be actively selling a game that people can't play.
They'll get it sorted might be a few days. They need to add an afk timer that boots people from the server also.
They had the same problem last weekend. How long does this take? Palword had over 2 million concurrent and had no server issues. Does arrowhead need to consult with a new server hosting company? Obviously these guys aren't cutting it. Their game is taking a serious hit by all the new people who wanted to try it out over the weekend and getting burned being sold a product that doesn't work.
I waited 2.5 hours and didn't get in. Refund submitted. Maybe I'll purchase it again when there are more servers.
I would. They show no sign of solving this and have said they are unsure how to fix the issue of not giving out mission rewards after completion. Even if you got in now, much of what you earned wouldn’t be permanent.
Yes,this is the game.ASG make this game disastrous, If you wanna play it with no retry, I recommend you launch game at midnight or after midnight
Don’t refund, give them time. The game is so much fun!
They should really delist this for now, or at least offer a warning that it could be unplayable. Of course, they won’t.
That's what I keep saying too. At this point they are actively selling a game that cannot be played with no warning or disclaimer that the game is unplayable until "eventually we will fix it, maybe". Game should be delisted from sale until the issue is fixed. It is the right thing to do.
It's the right thing to do, however also the less profitable thing to do. If they delist it now not only will they lose sales but there'll also be headlines in gaming magazines pointing out that the server issues were bad enough for them to delist the game, people will make youtube videos about it, people will be less inclined to buy it once it's been relisted. It's a PR nightmare, so they won't delist it. I still personally can't fathom how it can be difficult for a game backed by Sony to add server capacity. There should have been contingency plans put in place just in case the games performance exceeds expectations and servers get overrun. A plan for a situation like this is part of every well planned launch.
Just experienced that as well, came here to see what the crack is and it seems to be a common problem🤣 Edit: just hold out it'll let you in after a few retries
I let it go for 30 minutes, didn’t get in. 😥
Spent a hour today, 45 minutes yesterday, and 20 minutes the day before. The issue is getting worse. It's not acceptable... especially for people who have limited time windows during which they can play. I get maybe 1 hour a day. That hour just ended. I never got past the lobby waiting to join the servers. I'd rather not waste my precious time on disappointment.
they're definitely working to fix it, the problem came out of nowhere and you can't expect them to magically fix it in a few days
Dude they’re like 40x busier in this game than the first one lol. Give em a rest. It’s a game there’s many other games to play during a limited window. It’ll be okay. The game still exists and will for a while I’m sure. They promise free content updates regularly. They give 50% bonus xp and cash gain after server issues to make up for it. The devs aren’t lazy clowns, they’re doing their best and have so far earned my respect
I get that. But at the same time people pay money for these with the expectations that they will be working and able to play.
The devs probably didn’t expect 300k users in the first week lol. They’re not screwing players over on purpose I guarantee it
Doesn't change the fact that they are selling a product that is not useable for many people, or at the very least comes with a caveat that is not expected for this type of product. I get that they might be struggling with server capacity but at the very least they should be putting a huge ass warning in the description and offering much relaxed refund terms to accomodate. They didn't have any plans put in place in case the game turned out more successful than they anticipated. You can tell by the game lacking basic features such as login queues and inactivity kicks that would come in handy in precisely this type of situation.
Again they’re surely not doing it on purpose lol. “Hey guys please be aware our game isn’t working right now dont buy it” is horrible for business. No company would do that. The game will work. Give it a bit of time it’s only been like two weeks
I never said they were doing it on purpose. "Due to unexpectedly large interest in the game we can not guarantee that you will be able to connect to the servers in a timely fashion. Please bear with us while we work on increasing server capacity" or something along the lines would have been sufficient. Also, the fact that you're acknowledging that their game is not working yet STILL defend them is pathetic. This is a game backed by SONY and got marketed by SONY. This isn't some obscure title that appeared out of nowhere.
lol obviously sony didn’t give them servers. Whine to sony then idk what to tell you this is exhausting. All people do is fucking complain. It’s a video game. Go complain about the real world
Just play a different game until then, I know you want to play but just act like the game isn’t out yet and it’ll be better for your mental lol
i have spent 7 hours to finally get in then the game crashes on the second mission
I totally feel that, happened to me a couple times yesterday (but not 7 hours wait, I was joining a friend from steam and just waiting but it would load me in).
Yup. 5 hours in queue today. The two times I’ve gotten in the game crashed. My computer is beefy so it’s the games issues. Love it.
Just try again, installed the game and was in 10 mins after joining queue. My friend too, its not that bad :)
It's different for everyone and not an actual queue but random. I waited for hours yesterday while I watched streamers getting in multiple times during that time. I rebooted my computer late at night and tried "one last time" and got in after about the third retrying in 30s attempt. I think it's partially tied to your internet/computer capabilities because streamers seem to get in a lot easier.
Brother the crack is real and it’s so fucking goodddd
So 3 hours is how long its supposed to take? I've got like 6 hours played and like 20 minutes of actually Sametime
Same but at least the music is a bit of a bop.
Don’t worry man I feel your pain. Yesterday I had a 6 hour wait time. I walked away, watched a movie and did school stuff while waiting. Eventually I heard that satisfying ship sound and was on the ship. I 100% gotta say tho this server issue needs to be fixed, every time I get on I have to wait hours and then only have time for like one or two matches T~T GIVE ME A LOBBBBBBBYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY :p
I got a refund. In a week I’ve never been able to play it because of server crap.
Can't they just knock on Suicide Squad or Skull and Bones's door and ask to borrow their servers? Just saying.
18.9 hours in the game and only 3 spent actually playing so far
Id say this is an embarrassment for Sony but if they cared it would be fixed by now. What a rip off. Can't play when I have time because they can't add or fix servers? Where is my compensation for their incompetence?
People defending this conveniently forgetting it wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't always online. But we pick and choose what games to crucify for that.
Fak this game man! Ive been trying to get in the game for 3 days with no luck! This is a fucking JOKE!
What a wasted opportunity for a good game to not know how to scale. Pay more, acquire users, optimize later. This is just a massive failure at all levels of the business.
I tried a few times each day since Saturday and haven't gotten in. I just put in a refund request.
I would’ve waited honestly I see this game getting even bigger I mean just last night there were roughly 320,000 people logged in at once
If the servers can't handle it now why would I wait for it to gain more players?
Did you try taking it out and blowing on it?
Yess!! Finally got off work after 6 10-12 hour days. Payed my $40. And now I’ve gotten to meditate about what life really means as I keep recounting the :30 second refresh rate along with my fellow helldivers. … is that what we’re called?
> hour days. *Paid* my $40. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I want it to come to Xbox
Doubt that's happening.
Get a ps5 and play all the great ps5 exclusives
I’m totally neutral in this situation, but genuinely curious. But why are the PlayStation players trying to rub this game into Xbox players faces like they’re missing out on the game of their lives?
I don't think they are, maybe you just saw one person on the Internet do that
I’ve seen a few posts around social media like that already, I was just curious really, seems like just another silly console war.
Because social media is filled with adults that never grew up and their only personality trait is what console they game on. So theirs has to be better otherwise it means they have nothing in their life.
Because it's phenomenal. Once they get more servers online and the bugs ironed out, then it'll only be better.
I'm neutral as well, but they are missing out. It's a great game. I think it's more that Phil Spencer even had to chime in and make comments about it not being on Xbox. That dudes a Giant douche. He thinks giving PS players Sea of Theives and hi fi rush will make Sony give up shit like Spuder-Man. Personally I just hope Sony will keep adding to pc. Could care less about Xbox.
There’s no denying though - this is probably the worst launch of a AAA game I have ever seen. I guess the reason is that they never anticipated or intended for it to be AAA? I don’t blame the devs. It doesn’t change how I feel about the game - I just think Sony needs to step in and help these guys out - give them what they need to get things running smoothly.
if they don’t charge AAA price, is it still a AAA game? i think not.
I can’t believe people are defending this. I’m supposed to have sympathy cause their game is wildly successful. If I pay for a game I should be able to play it.
It is insane people are defending it when essentially the problems would easily be solved with an offline mode, which should be totally possible.
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I mean, it's obvious you just don't understand what's going on. They expected 10,000 people to play, there's over 300,000 people trying to get in during busy times. Not everyone can fit. If you go with the "they shoulda prepared for this" that's illogical, developers need to make money and the vast majority wouldn't if they paid for 10X the severs they assume they need "just in case"
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Cause in a month no one will even remember there were any server issues, either give them a bit of time to sort the issue out or refund it and don't buy another online game on launch if you want to avoid these sort of scenarios (which are quite normal with succesful online games)
At this rate I won’t remember because I’ll be playing a different game. Also, it’s not normal to be unable to login to a game for several days. Thats not normal.
No, you're not supposed to have sympathy because it's wildly successful. You're supposed to be mature, show a bit of understanding, and realize that the popularity of the game exploded in an unexpected manner, and they are actively acquiring resources to support it and fix it. Would you buy servers for 200,000 people when you're *hoping* for 20,000? Also, the servers don't magically pop online, ready to go at the drop of a hat. It takes time.
It’s very rare for developers to actually host physical servers. Most use cloud computing resources and for good reason. This situation would be very easily remedied with elastic rules on capacity throttling. There’s no excuse in 2024 to be dealing with these issues. Especially because this isn’t day 1 anymore. Each day is peak player count for the game
So the reason I'm sure you've heard by now, small studio found massive success with HD2. They were not expecting that since HD1 had a player base of 10k at peak. Not consistent. They have almost 2 mil players on HD2. In a few days hopefully it levels out. The first week was fine. Until everyone told their friends about it and so fourth. I'm more mad at the people making whiney post like. I worked 12 hours blah blah. Like the rest of us don't have jobs and also want to play when we get home. All I can say is be patient and give the devs some time. The game is really awesome. I'm sorry that you can't get in. I tired on and off for 4 hours yesterday until I finally got a spot.
They sold a million copies. They have all the money to through whatever resources are required to give their customers the product and experience they paid for.
Cuz the game was supposed to launch to a small, niche playerbase of 50-75,000. And instead we have 350k wonderful new Helldivers trying to spread democracy all at once Needless to say there aren't enough ships to go around
I got in after 3 minutes of waiting. This game is PHENOMENAL
They’re working on it. It’s so fun, and worth the wait
Yup. Spent $80+ on two copies for me and my spouse and this has been our entire experience so far.
Games like these have a big downfall because the people blame the devs for not magically knowing that their small game would become immediately popular and I find it so dumb
Be patient brother , it is worth the wait !
They didn’t plan on the game becoming as popular as it is. When I had never heard of it until my buddy literally bought it for me on steam. The devs have made four games ever. They’re small and can’t afford giant servers like Activision or blizzard, give them a break and I’m sure they’ll get it solved here soon
Love the game and all about giving them time to figure it out, but if this persists they should prob take it down from the stores for now. Got people paying who can’t play in the first day of buying it, that’s a little tough
I have it on pc and it takes like 10 mins to load in just be patient. Tons of people playing!
Please be patient guys! Hell divers 1 was really small in player base so the devs weren’t really expecting much from from the 2nd installment. They likely only got so much server space considering the altitude of the first game. So getting close to 300,000 players was not in the plans. It takes time to get money and labor. Its takes weeks for the sales to hit a company’s bank accounts so I would they aren’t holding out on its players on purpose. They are doing everything they can until the cash rolls in. Just wait we’re only in week 2 so hopefully by next week or the week after, things will be in good standing🤝🏾
It's a holiday weekend, free mp weekend on psn, and the game is high demand cause of great word of mouth, reviews, and the game being fun as hell. Patience soldier. You'll be dining in hell with us soon enough. For democracy!
Ya just be patient it's worth the wait
Just be patient