I hate this game and I hate the community for ruining it. I also hate the community for being a hotbed of some of the dumbest takes on PVE game design imaginable.
Helldivers 2 was actually fun and interesting once upon a time, and had very neat emergent gameplay mechanics that forced players to make interesting moment-to-moment tactical choices to succeed.
The community bitched that the game was too hard, and so several patches were released that basically removed the friction from the game overnight. The heaviest enemy types in the game (at the time) could now be one-shot by infantry support weapons (when previously teamwork or interesting use of air support was required), enemy accuracy and tracking was heavily reduced, and many interesting side-objectives that once offered challenging emergent gameplay scenarios were made trivial by new weapon additions and insane player powercreep.
The community's arguments ranged from stupid to ignorant and I've seen them try to infest communities of games I actually still enjoy playing. Some examples were:
- "Back of the box feature says 'spread democracy with overpowered weapons'"
(It also says "work as a team to overcome impossible odds")
- "The game didn't get easier, you just got better"
(The 60-day patches *literally* catapulted player power into the moon. It was an overnight change: having fun one day, incredibly bored the next day.)
- "It's a PvE game, balance doesn't matter, just have fun"
(Thought-terminating argument, but regardless: I get my enjoyment from trying to overcome obstacles, not from being handed my victories every single time.)
- "Just don't bring X weapon/strat" OR "just bring the worst gear in the game for the given front"
(Teammates exist - this is a co-op shooter -and player power is so vast that one player bringing just one or two of the best items makes the game significantly easier for everyone. It's also not that hard and very boring to bring items that are obviously shit on any given front)
(Yeah, I have. But this is a cooperative hordeshooter game. You're argument is literally 'ignore a fundamental element of the game if you want to have fun.')
And then you had all of the dumbshit enemy balance suggestions people had.
- "Buffing enemy health and damage is bad and boring game design. They should increase enemy density, add new enemies, and 'make the AI smarter'."
(Every single one of those suggestions carries a literal physical cost on hardware and pushes the game engine to its limits. You cannot just infinitely scale enemy density, enemy types and enemy behavior without eventually encountering performance or stability issues.)
(Further, it's actually ass when enemies are so weak and so easy to kill that they don't ever get the chance to actually attack you, or they maybe get a single attack off. Enemies actually need to be able to survive long enough to complete the action they were designed to do, otherwise there's hardly a point in having them in the game.)
Long story short: folks! Helldivers 2 is dogshit and so are all the subreddits. I hate this game. I hate that I played this game before it became a completely frictionless experience because I know I will never experience that game again.
BONUS COMPLAINT (also very stupid):
- "X weapon should do more damage because it's not realistic otherwise."
(Realism is not the objective of 99% of games, and sorry: if this game were pursuing "realism", the enemies should be able to shoot your hellpods out of the sky, and the lasers and infantry rockets some enemies use should be killing players in two hits maximum.)