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The only thing that can stop the bugs is A STRONG ECONOMY - HELLDIVERS

And don't forget that going prone really helps. It reduces both damage and ragdoll. So when in doubt hit the deck
 
I continue to swear by 120mm HE and the walking barrage.

I have now added a spear launcher for when I need to end something completely.
 
Elfalpha said:
The safest place for avoiding a 320mm is on the beacon.

This is...only partly a joke. Quite often I've seen the beacon location completely untouched after a barrage.
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320mm is wide area saturation, and shells are fired at semi-random pattern around the beacon spot. So it makes sense that sitting at Beacon is like being at the eye of the storm: danger all around, and if you are even slightly off you are in world of pain, but if you sit tight you might survive.

Now, 120mm is a lot tighter spread, so for that one you want at least 40m safety distance.

4WheelSword said:
I continue to swear by 120mm HE and the walking barrage.

I have now added a spear launcher for when I need to end something completely.
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Walking barrage is good when assaulting a position, since it can clear out initial defenders and keep going as reinforcements arrive. Which kinda is its purpose, allow you to advance under the cover of artillery
 
Big patch drop:

# 🛠️ PATCH 01.000.100 ⚙️

**📍 Major Updates**
Planetary Hazards active
* Many planets now have additional environmental challenges that will appear at random while you are deployed, from fire tornadoes to meteor showers and many more.

**⚖️ Balancing**
Eradicate Missions
* Eradicate missions now require more kills and enemies spawn more often. The time to complete the mission was previously shorter than intended and should now usually take twice as long to complete.

Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons
Balancing adjustments made to the following:
* SG-225 Breaker
  • Breaker: Decreased magazine capacity from 16 to 13, increased recoil from 30 to 55
* SG-8 Punisher
  • Punisher: Increased total ammo capacity from 40 to 60, increased stagger force, increased damage from 40 per bullet to 45 per bullet
* SG-225SP Breaker Spray & Pray
  • Breaker Spray & Pray: Increased armor penetration, increased fire rate from 300 to 330, increased number of pellets from 12 to 16 per shot, decreased magazine size from to 32 to 26
* RS-422 Railgun
  • Railgun: Decreased armor penetration, decreased damage against durable enemy parts
* FLAM-40 Flamethrower
  • Flamethrower: Increased damage per second by 50%
* LAS-98 Laser Cannon
  • Laser Cannon: Increased damage against durable enemy parts, increased armor penetration, improved ergonomics
Stratagems
Balancing adjustments have been made to
* Shield Generator Pack
  • Energy Shield Backpack: Increased delay before recharging
* Orbital 120MM HE Barrage
* Orbital 380MM HE Barrage
  • 380mm and 120mm Orbital Barrages: Increased duration of the bombardment, decreased spread

**🔧 Fixes**
* Fixed armor rating values not reducing damage as intended.
* Fixed certain Bug Holes (including Stalker Nests) that were unnecessarily hard to destroy.
* Fixed anti-aliasing toggle not working on PS5.
* Balanced lighting across all planets to solve cases where the game was too dark.
* Improved flashlight efficacy.
* Increased visibility during "sand rain" weather on Erata Prime.
* Updated tutorial materials and lighting.
* Improved cases where some materials could look blurry if "Lighting" graphic setting was set to "Low".
* Fixed timing issues that could occur in the "Extract E-710" primary objective.
* Changed button interaction behavior for buttons in bunker POIs. Helldivers will now let go of the button after holding it for a few seconds.
* Fixed some cases of large assets floating if the ground beneath them was blown up.
* Helldivers standing next to ICBMs during launch will get properly toasty with a chance of not-so-spontaneous combustion.
* Fixed unthrowable snowballs after ragdolling.
* Fixed being able to use grenades after drowning.
* Camera no longer locked on the player's own corpse and blocking spectator mode.
* Helldivers now take damage from fire, gas etc. generated by other players.
* Armor no longer stretches when dismembered.
 
Been doing some testing, and as far as we can tell, the Railgun still works fine against Charger Legs. It certainly still Staggers Chargers, you might need an extra shot to break the leg armour if you don't charge the shot well (so it's a risk-reward thing).
 
Incidentally, there was a comment by community manager regarding why certain decisions are made:



This is the first round in a never-ending series of balance changes. And we believe it's important to be completely transparent about our approach to game balance, especially when it comes to weapons and stratagems that you have strong opinions about.

Our goal is to give you a wide range of weapon choices, where each gun has its purpose and none is strictly better than another. Sure, you will have your own favorite, but it should come from your personal preference, not from the universally agreed knowledge of which gun is the strongest. Generally, we balance each item according to its quirks, so if a weapon is very effective at what it does, it should come with significant disadvantages to balance its power.

The AC-8 Autocannon is a good example of a well-balanced weapon: it packs a powerful punch, has a very good range, but requires you to carry an ammo backpack or have a friend assist you. The GL-21 Grenade Launcher is the opposite example. It's a good general purpose weapon that gives you so much flexibility, it obviously can't deal too much damage without becoming overpowered.

But weapons that are both powerful and versatile become a no-brainer choiсe during the weapon selection phase. It robs you of your own agency, as stale "meta" builds force you to make an unfair choice between a fun weapon and an effective one. In short: Powerful weapons can't be too versatile, versatile weapons can't be too powerful.

Having said all that, after analyzing player feedback and the data we've collected over the past month, we found three biggest offenders of that principle:

  • SG-225 Breaker
  • RS-422 Railgun
  • SH-32 Shield Generator Backpack

All three of those were quite strong with too little downsides, overshadowing all other options on higher difficulty levels. So with this patch, they're getting significant downsides to balance their power. However, we strongly believe that the changes won't ruin this build, but rather help the affected items find their place among the other options and stay effective in capable hands.

On a more personal note, I know that having your favorite toy nerfed absolutely sucks. Investing countless hours into mastering a weapon is an incredible dedication from you. which is the main reason we're making this game in the first place. And then having that weapon weakened feels like a punishment for being too good at the game.

But I implore you not to compare a changed item with its older version, but to evaluate the existing one as it is and see if it still has a place in your heart.

We thank you for your dedication and commitment to spreading Democracy in the most optimal way possible! Now it's up to us to make it as fun and entertaining as we can

Oh and we also buffed a bunch of weapons as well!

Happy Helldiving, everyone.
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Honestly, I agree with them. Railgun was being overpowering and a nobrainer when choosing secondary. So I agree with nerfing it so that there is reason to pick other weapons, which are perfectly viable once you stop the meta-thinking.
 
The CEO's comment about wanting to avoid PvP because it engenders toxic behaviour in a community is perhaps relevant here: even in a PvE game the pressure to be 'on meta' can really ruin the experience. It's a problem in Destiny 2 for example, there are plenty of stories from different eras of that game where you'd get dropped from a raid because you didn't have Gjally, Xenophage, etc. Destiny is a game where it's possible for players to have way more optimised character builds and damage output can be very variable so it's perhaps hard to avoid entirely, but for a game like Helldivers it's a good ideal to strive for.

Curious to see how vehicles are balanced with this in mind.
 
Yeah, there was already a meta forming, anyone who didn't rock Breaker or Railgun had a high chance of being kicked out for "wrong" loadout.

Reddit and Steam are already full of people complaining that "killing chargers is now impossible" and so forth, most being incapable of thinking anything else except "railgun the charger" as possible solution.
 
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It was already not hard to Flamer a Charger to death before the patch, now it just got significantly easier.
And a Flamer does of course offer significant crowd control, which also got buffed.
 
The most meta set of builds in HD2 will probably be the most powerful loadout(s) that lets you answer all possible enemies/situations with least relative effort and without having to rely on more than minimal teamplay. Part of the meta and people developing Opinions on it is just part of the natural process of the userbase learning the game and is kinda unavoidable imo.

Common reasons that people bully off-meta is because they hate losing and don't think they can carry, or hate players who have bad teamplay or don't know in-game etiquette, so they want teammates who don't suck. Checking if their teammates are playing meta is an inaccurate but very simple proxy for skill.

This occurs even in PvE games even where a sufficiently skilled player doesn't even have to be playing meta to solo-carry the whole team through the hardest available content in the game.

IME this problem is less severe in the highest difficulty (or whichever set of difficulties where you are playing simply for the joy of the difficulty, not in-game rewards) where there are fewer passengers and people will be more likely to trust you know what you're doing, and probably will be most toxic among people who play the second highest difficulty (or whichever one where a bunch of people get filtered).

Meta-checking will probably be at its worst if/when the game's been out for a while, the playerbase has worked out etiquette and best practice and teamplay and then it goes onto console crossplay/Gamepass and the game gets a whole wave of totally new players.
 
Playing at 8s I never have encountered an issue with meta bullying? The big issue pre-patch is that a lot of the guns just don't feel great while the Breaker does and the Railgun is a dedicated Problem Solver. I'm very happy for the Flamethrower to get stronger as it's a ton of fun to use but often didn't quite feel like it did enough.
 
Mutton said:
Playing at 8s I never have encountered an issue with meta bullying?
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I wouldn't expect otherwise. Meta or otherwise bullying has never an order of magnitude as common in-game as it's discussed out of game on Reddit/Steam in DRG/Darktide/etc. People love to complain about toxic teammates the rare times they get one.

Admittedly IDK if Difficulty 8 has the same sort of vibes as Haz4 DRG or Heresy Darktide yet.
 
Soulgazer said:
How significant was the laser cannon buff?
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I haven't tried the post patch version, but before the laser cannon was hard to keep on target and had lower armor pen than I would expect. An ergonomics boost is much appreciated. The big issue for me was that you needed to hold it on weak points while the cannon fought against being precisely aimed.
 
I'm seeing elsewhere that apparently if you hold the laser cannon on a charger leg, it'll initially appear to deflect but before long actually punch through, break the armor, and in short order kill the charger.
 
Seems like there was either stealth change to evacuation missions (didn't see anything about them on the change log) or they just made the old one disappear.

New ones are a lot better, and there is no longer constant non-stop enemy spawn.
 
Mandemon said:
Seems like there was either stealth change to evacuation missions (didn't see anything about them on the change log) or they just made the old one disappear.

New ones are a lot better, and there is no longer constant non-stop enemy spawn.
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Are you playing the scientist evacuation as part of Automaton defense campaigns? Or are you doing the colonist rescue one?
 
Ford Prefect said:
The CEO's comment about wanting to avoid PvP because it engenders toxic behaviour in a community is perhaps relevant here: even in a PvE game the pressure to be 'on meta' can really ruin the experience. It's a problem in Destiny 2 for example, there are plenty of stories from different eras of that game where you'd get dropped from a raid because you didn't have Gjally, Xenophage, etc. Destiny is a game where it's possible for players to have way more optimised character builds and damage output can be very variable so it's perhaps hard to avoid entirely, but for a game like Helldivers it's a good ideal to strive for.

Curious to see how vehicles are balanced with this in mind.
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I have a couple different manners of opinions on this (a good chunk of this post will stray away from the quote I grabbed, but I wanted to address the meta discussions first at least), stemming from all of the public co-op, private friend-based co-op, and single-player perspectives, having played all of them a little bit at this point. Admittedly I'm probably not as far along as others are, having about 12 hours logged at the moment, but having experienced all three I think I have at least a decent idea of how things are intended to be.

From the public co-op perspective, it certainly feels the most like the standard "play to advance the cause" way to go, and I can see why all the meta-discussions would naturally gravitate toward this end. Unfortunately, this is also probably the most common place people are gonna be playing, so I understand why the toxicity of everything can get to people. Not everyone wants to play with Breaker, Railgun, etc (I don't know enough to go into too much detail but I know these two are pretty good), but there are always going to be your typical CoD sweats that try to meddle with that enjoyment. I feel like the best way to mitigate this is to either present a lock-in mechanic, where kicking can no longer occur after a certain point (this is certainly open to abuse and I probably would err away from this), or some kind of moderation system to see who tends to abuse the kick feature the most, and position those players with others who exhibit similar behaviors (wouldn't fully eliminate the problem but would at least help more casual players where most necessary).

That being said, my solution thus far has personally been to avoid pubs entirely, and rather play with a smaller group of Discord buddies when available. While we certainly can have our...moments...it's been an absolute blast so far, one that I haven't experienced since BO3 Zombies almost ten years ago (I can feel the wrinkles forming on my skin after saying this :V). This is the game at its absolute best -- no meta, no worries, just screwing around and murdering bugs and bots in the name of Managed Democracy. Even getting the RP elements into it to justify friendly fire incidents has made things really interesting as we continue to play and get better at the game.

On the other hand, single-player has proved to be a different game entirely in my experience. What went from a mission-based shoot stuff and blow stuff up, became a nightmare-fueled horror trip at the drop of a hat. No voices of reason to guide your way, just you, the planet, and a bunch of giant pests bent on murdering you if you so much as look at them the wrong way. I don't know how else to explain it -- the difficulty capability goes down considerably, but the struggle is far different than anything I've ever experienced. If you haven't tried it out, I highly recommend it. You might just find it even more enjoyable than the co-op missions, if it turns out to be your kind of thing.

Put it all together, and I'm not sure how much meta is going to detract from the game. I think this first round of balance patches is a step in the right direction in terms of equalizing everything, though I'm not sure I like the nerf approach over trying to buff other things to be in line with the super meta stuff. As much as everything should be at least viable, and as much as the game is meant to be a challenge, I fear that continuing to nerf meta will lead to a situation where the highest-difficulty missions will become practically unbeatable, since regardless of where you stand on that discussion, it's pretty easy to see -- even well before reaching difficulty 7 and beyond -- that certain weapons just don't cut it right now.

Regardless, I'm really excited to see where the game goes from here, and I really hope it stays as popular as it is for a long time to come. Oh and I will accidentally murder my teammates with the flamethrower now that it's buffed. No I am not sorry for those who decide to walk into my general line of sight.
 
Thing is, there is no real way to "buff everything else". Issue with Railgun was that is was fast, didn't require backpack, killed everything, was effectively a sniper and carried decent amount of ammo.

Let's say we need to comapre Railgun as it was and a Recoiless Rifle that has been "buffed" to kill chargers in single shot. People are still taking Railgun because you can shoot fast with it, where as RR needs reloading. Reducing that reload takes away from the whole "have a team mate" aspect.

Buffing Autocannon? Well, either it is now as powerful as Railgun, at which point Railgun still wins because you don't need lengthy reload after five shots.

And so on and so on. Every other weapon was balanced around their downside, Railgun was only one with no real downside. It killed everything, reached everything and there was no challenge in using it. Now that the default mode is "only" usable against medium armor and you need charged shot to punch through heavy armor, there is a downside that balances it.
 
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