HELLDIVERS 2 is an amazing live service WHEN it WANTS to be 

You have no idea the rollercoaster this script went through

There is no better feeling than getting 100 super credits from a random drone. God bless.

This feels pretty well timed after Microsoft just shut down Tango Gameworks, and then said “we need smaller games that gives us prestige and award.”

It’s also baffling with what’s going on with AAA studios recently because who’s gonna want to work with you if you close studios or interfere with how the game is run? I’m an artist, and if all my employer is gonna do is lie to me and fuck up MY project, then I’d rather self publish than sell my soul to a corp.

Bricky trying to make a normal video for once: Universe: "Let me explain to you why that's not gonna fly"

Having Brad of all people read the corporate announcement in the intro is very funny considering how much time he spends justly complaining about GW's horrible practices.

The fact you forgot to put Team Fortress 2's Heavy on the right in the thumbnail baffles me.

A thing not brought up is that the armors in the cash shop dont come with exclusive effects, but instead are effects already available (and they rotate consistently, eliminating full FOMO)

This coming out right after Helldivers 2 became unavailable for countries you can't make a PSN account in is the universe fucking with Bricky.

What's funny is if they would've just given a free cape and/or armor without making it mandatory, they would've had a ton of new Sony accounts.

Steam reviews be like: "Nah, I'd dive."

Sony has not made helldivers 2 playabale still in all of those countries. They added more countries to the ban list.

Bad timing?

Josh Strife Hayes made a video on something called "Horizontal Vs. Vertical Progression." What makes Helldivers 2 Live service so good, is that it follows the Horizontal Progression model. Horizontal Progression is the concept of having gear, abilities, or weapons be good in some areas, but bad in others and relative to build diversity. 50% chance to negate lethal damage is a decent buff, but is it better than 50% less explosive damage? That depends on what your fighting. Having better sprint isn't necessarily better then having more Stims, or grenades.

I JUST WANNA KNOW WHY HE SPRAYED PELICAN-1's BAY WITH THE FLAMER

I wish “Bricked Up” would make more video essay-like videos. This shit slaps

The use of the survivors bias to explain the circumstances of Balatro and Lethal Company was great. couldn't really find a better way to explain "Indie is great, but there's a reason why in 9000 releases a year, you might only know about 3-9 of em"

I get Bricked up everytime I Helldive

Well bricky it did age, thankfully that opening statement got fixed

If any game's monetization should be copied, it is Deep Rock Galactic

Your point about suspicious really hits home. The community is currently getting quite upset about how Arrowhead is managing balance patches, and bugs. The recent Sony debacle burned a TON of community good will, and Arrowhead is going to have to work hard to get it back. And yes, parts of this video did age like milk. Arrowhead finally fixed the bug with the Eruptor that made it fling you towards the explosion, which accidentally turned into a MASSIVE nerf, since it neutered the Eruptor's ability to kill swarms of enemies, since follow-up shots now hit almost nothing, rather than a cluster of enemies flung towards your original shot. Then, at the same time, Arrowhead delivered a MAJOR nerf to the Eruptor, not once, but twice in the span of a few days. Not only did ammo capacity get halved, but now you need almost twice as many shots to kill groups of enemies, and it's substantially worse at it's main goal of killing heavier enemies. The gun is dead. The Sony debacle really did hurt the community. Right now, I'm taking a break from Helldivers, since I'm not a huge fan of the constant nerfs to previous warbond weapons right as they release new warbonds. The new warbond is pretty terrible, with a gun worse than the entry level assault rifle, and only one good SMG that everyone is expecting to get nerfed HARD very soon. I don't know why I'd bother with the warbond when the weapons constantly bounce between "unusable" and "waiting for it to get nerfed to unusable". I'm tired of never having a reliable weapon to kill things, especially with all the stealth buffs to enemies and patrols constantly making the game harder as Arrowhead only nerfs the best weapons. Usually, the new warbond contains some pretty useless weapons, like the still-useless laser pistol, and fire grenades that were bugged for months. Why bother with Warbonds if half the weapons don't work? Until Arrowhead can clean up their balance patching, and get their technical problems fixed so they don't release new ship upgrades that literally never worked at launch, I'm going to take a step back from Helldivers and play other games. It's unfortunate, because I really wanted to be playing Helldivers for a long long time, but given how I went from running the game fine to having more than one game breaking progression blocking bugs per mission, I'm just not having fun anymore.

This script for bricky was the embodiment of: God shits in my dinner once again

"TROOPERS, WE ARE DROPPING FEET FIRST INTO HELL" *Camera pans into SONY HQ*

Part of the continued dissatisfaction towards Helldivers 2 is that during the initial PSN debacle, Sony decided their first solution was to restrict where you can buy the game. In at least 177 countries: you can't make a PSN account (and using a VPN is against Sony's TOS) and now you can't buy Helldivers 2. And when they said they wont go forward with the PSN update we celebrated because we thought won. But we haven't won. They pulled the wool over our eyes because people in those 177 countries STILL CANT BUY THE GAME. And in fact, THE AMOUNT OF RESTRICTED COUNTRIES HAS ONLY GROWN. AND ON TOP OF THAT, those SAME countries are also restricted in purchasing another Sony game on steam, "Ghost of Tsushima". How soon will it be that another game becomes restricted? This may only be the beginning. But nobody cares about any of that anymore because the heat died down and people jumped off the hate train. If people really cared about fighting against what Sony was trying to do, they'd still care about it now. We liberated a planet, but the sector is still under attack. We need those other Helldivers at our side, and we need them now more than ever.

I think some of the most notable things about grinding the currency ingame is also that: 1. It is not artificially time gated. Many live service games tie their premium currency to ingame missions that only update once a day at most. 2. You arent getting pitiful amounts compared to the effort put in to get it. What may require you to be very successful in another game to earn, such as getting 10 kills in a pvp game, instead just requires you to keep an eye out for the many boxes on the map, with some of them even being visible through a bright beam to guide you. You can even do so on the easiest difficulty, making you go through minimal opposition, and doesnt even require mission completion. Combined these factors make it both easily accessible and farmable with minimal fuss. If you really want something shiny from the premium store and specifically go in with the intention to farm, you can get enough currency to get it within an hour or two easily. Obviously a bit longer to get enough for one of the passes, but still easily doable in a day or two. Other games would require weeks of daily playing and mission completions for similar results, if you are lucky. It also helps that the store is so small and out of the way. Many other games would have big flashing boxes telling you about the new thing in the store right as you log in, or how there was a big sale or something. Instead you have to purposely open a menu, and that menu defaults to showing you the free stuff, requiring you to actively scroll to the paid items. Even just the fact that the highest purchasing price for ingame currency is 20 bucks, as we can see at 19:26, is a massive shakeup in how things are usually done. It makes things feel a lot more reasonable than those 100-200 buck "mega packs" that have become so common place.

the irony that this is posted after sony backed down from the psn accounts

The issue isn't dev costs but corporate greed and the need for infinite growth. A lot of companies kicking people put left and right are still posting record profits. Just not record enough.

I love Helldivers. I hope they add paints to the game. I want to paint my armor, guns, strategems, and ship orange. Also I want more vehicles like in the first game. The motorcycle would be so helpful.

they add a new warbond. playerbase finds a single gun that is slightly better than dogwater. devs nerfs in into the ground. repeat until fun is gone.

It's unfortunate that with the fiasco, the playerbase dropped to half what it was. We used to have 360k divers on one planet annihalating the rest of the automatons, but now theres only 137k for the entire game. Arrowhead hasnt changed the metrics on their major orders to match, so we will be losing MO's for a while until they figure out what the player numbers average is.

"they might get enough credit to buy the new warbond"? brother i got all the warbonds and most of armors from super credit shop and i havnt spend a dollor extra on this game

The amount of heavy lifting that is required to keep going with content is something that a lot of the big AAA game companies just don't seem to have gotten their heads around. The speed helldivers puts new content out is probably the fastest of any game company I have seen, I just hope they don't work themselves into the ground with burnout or exhaustion cos this sounds real difficult.

The fact that arrowhead made the intro of HD2 such a memeable format for many different situations really toots my horn

I actually think the current pace of Helldivers 2 is unsustainable at this point. Weapons aren’t varied enough and balancing everything will be a chore in the end. They need to slow down and honestly fire the current gun balance guy, cause he has not said good things to the players.

At the moment I am writing those lines, you should all be aware that the "Global Hostage Situation" of HD2 is still active, as over 170 countries/territories are still unable to purchase the game ! _( Note : I don't have all the details on how it works, but Steam seems to aknowledge different jurisdictions on the same territories, thus adding extra selling places, which is why the number appear to be that big... but even without that ? We're easely over 100 countries in the world locked in this global F**k up ! )_ And let me clarify this : The players who made the purchase in those territories, prior the events, are still able to play it, on that day ! But as it is NOW, no more players from those territories can purchase the game any longer, not even those who bought it once, and asked refunds when Sony's bomb dropped . . . In conclusion : Sony willingly sold a product that was _NOT INTENDED FOR THEM_ in the first place, as the potnetial players cannot asnwer Sony's demands . . . and they wanted to force them to make PSN accounts, for which there was no options to make any ! Now they say to everyone they backtrack their decision . . .But since a week, we await for answers, and to see all those people being able to dive with us, at their own will. We don't even know who is locking the process Between Sony or Steam. Even Arrowhead is not aware of what the F- is goin' on. Thing is, there is MORE people who wants to play this game now, than it was prior, as well as in the locked countries... and because of Sony's greed and some mindless corporate scums, we end up with this quite unprecedented event. Just because shmucks wanted to touch their bonus early juin with big PSN numbers, and go wank themselves with extra money from the shareholders.

18:43 "praetorians... PLEASE STOP" i felt that in my soul and beyond. that MP was a good time too

1,500 views in 5 minutes??? Damn, brother….love to see it!

The key problem with balancing in this game is that, even as a player who grinded out super credits for every warbond, there is NO incentive to get excited for warbonds and updates. Every single patch changes a weapon or a stratagem that I like for the worse and its gotten to the point that my 3 favorite weapons in the game are nearly unusable now. I'm close to dropping the game if things continue this way. Why would I play a coop PVE game where the coolest weapons are ruined because a spreadsheet said too many people use them?

loved the voice-over stuffs for this type of video where the main focus is disccussion and not a review of a game or such it keeps my attention better and helps getting the point across that much better too

The biggest problem that I don't see people talking about, is that the "cadence" they talk about is overwhelming Arrowhead, and they're about to eat themselves. You can see it in the warbonds, first two had unique passives for all armors and interesting weapons, third lost the new passives and the weapons were pretty uninteresting and clearly didn't have enough play testing. This last one... not convinced it had any play testing. The armor and weapons are beyond unimpressive, they're down right unacceptable. The pace is too fast for Arrowhead to keep up with and they're falling behind. They're flying to close to the sun, and this isn't going to get better at the pace they're going.

Crazy? I was crazy once. They sent me to a planet. A planet full of bugs. Bugs made crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They sent me to a planet. A planet full of bugs. Bugs made crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They sent me to a planet. A planet full of bugs. Bugs made crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They sent me to a planet. A planet full of bugs. Bugs made crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They sent me to a planet. A planet full of bugs. Bugs made crazy. Crazy? I was cra-

the fact that $20 is the most you have to pay for a single bundle of super credits is insane

I didn't spend a dollar on the ME3 packs but I unlocked all of the gold tier stuff to the max and got most of the N7 stuff. Loved that coop mode

I think one of the things no one is talking about is how the warbonds are a grind. An easy grind, but still something you have to work through. Whether you pay for it or earn it, no one gets everything out of them without a little work. Like the halo 3 armors of old, you only get the cool stuff when you work for it. But there's also a clear path to near 100% collection completion for the base game.

I was so surprised to hear our friends from Poorhammer, nice surprise though!

Don't forget that Sony pulled back the requirement *AND* banned sales for the game in the relevant countries at the same time.

Players have already found a few ways to optimise the farm to earn the amount of Super Credits from random drops in the missions. You need a few hours of farming to do that, but you can also get enough credits for a pass just for playing the game in a casual way (it just takes a while). Giving players the ability to earn premium currency without spending any money is a quick way to lessen their meaning while also not removing them entirely. Also I really respect Arrowhead for not doing any sketchy things in shop. Simple prices, no calculated leftovers tempting you to buy another bundle, not a single "whale option" for hundreds of bucks.

The hybrid voice over with in person presentations was a great combo, keep it up, feels more fluid then just one or the other.

im sorry, did i hear correctly? 100k$ A YEAR? to be a developer??? im in the wrong job

Arrowhead: We just wanna make games people will enjoy. Sony: No you don't. Fans and players holding the gun to Sony's head through reviews: Yes we f**king do. An my other favorite Arrowhead Community Managers: How dare anyone complain about the game having bugs or crashes? if you bring it up in anyway or call out our mods for pushing politics and banning anyone for the smallest arbitrary infraction. Wave of F's in discord.

Love this style of editing, very slick. I think this way it makes more enfasis on the points you're making. Great vid!

Also I don't see anyone mention that *most* premium armor have the same abilities as the free armors just with different weight classes

New Bricky video? Give it views. "I'm doing my part."

I still haven't change my review from negative to positive. All those other countries, to my knowledge, are still barred from buying and playing the game.

The mix formats of voice Iver and in person was great! good video

Something to add to this that's been brought up, is that Sony still didn't de-list the game from the areas that don't have psn as an option in the first place. So even though Sony dialed back the PSN requirement, they're still alienating so many fans and countries in revenge

Helldiver 2 Non-PSN countries are blocked from Steam, so Sony did not revert the PSN decision, it doubled down on it. They lied, bad move.

They took back the Sony thing, so even the outdated part is outdated

Lets take a moment to appreciate how creative bricky gets with his "factor" ads. Honestly thought that the vid was starting lol.

Fun fact, on rare occassions super credit packs found in missions conation 100 credits instead of 10.

How do you mean that armor and weapons dont feel different enough? Sure, there's some overlap, in that assault rifles play like assault rifles, but they can't be called the same. The shotguns alone have a pump action pellets, pump action slug, full auto clip loaded, dragons breath rounds, a variant on the full auto, and an energy based electric arcing weapon. Armor can have more health, reduced explosive damage, stealth capabilities, better throwing ranges, even a guts mechanic (and would have saved your life in the intro as it stops bleed damage). They all interact with the same mechanics overall sure, but im just unclear how it doesn't matter because they're too similar.

I bett that Helldivers eat Factor

Hey I heard Brad from Poor Hammer narrating an article :3 idk what cued me to it, his recognizable voice or is thinly veiled sarcasm 😂

Currently there are only 2 premium warbond items I really like for their uniqueness. The Senator has a percentage chance to spin when you pull it out and you start spinning it when you interact with it. The kneel victory pose has a randomised set of poses

The PSN "debacle" and the community reaction was very interesting to see and the impact the community had. But the truth is there has been no impact as of now, the blocked countries are still blocked. Even worse the list of blocked countries was expanded to include 3 more countries (The Baltics), and yet many of the negative reviews were changed to positive and seen as a win. Somewhat disheartening won't lie lol as someone from a blocked country.

Atleast helldivers problems will be helldivers problems for a while now. Hey Sony, why aren't you actively making sure helldivers gets listed back on steam again. Edit: It appears they are doing the opposite. Man

19:15 100% I spent 5 dollars on an old prepaid card in my apartment because it felt okay to do. The credits were close enough to tempt me to pull the trigger.

One thing you missed out, the countries that were banned that had previously bought it are still banned (as of writing this), arrowhead CEO is still in talks with Sony to try and undo this but referred to it as a "Herculean effort".

they did ban purchase of it in 180 countries. just after they said they weren't gonna do the PSN thingy. so uh. we still lost. the game can't be purchased in about two thirds of the world.

Be advised, Sony has not followed through on their promise. Helldivers 2 is still unavailable in 177 countries in which a PSN is unavailable. AH, I am sorry, and this is not your fault, but I will not support Helldivers 2 again until the matter is resolved.

I realy like this new style of presentation, you feels much more synergised with the video and feels much smoother.(not that there was anything particularly wrong with your previous style) Great video :D

I love when fun weapons gets nerfed to hell I love when my battle pass weapon is worse than the free one (Tenderizer vs Liberator, and many more) I love when they introduce random new ennemies on some planets and don't tell you they are immune to anything except a single weapon

"When you sus into Ohio, The Sigma starts rizzing back" Nietzsche

Helldivers 2

As a $40 and done player I can say that if you just play the game and do not buy anything from the store, you can unlock all the warbonds. I have the 3 current warbonds and I'm half way to get the 1000 for the next one and Im only level 62, just play a couple games a day and that's it

As a $40 and done player, I have played on and off since release and I have gotten every warbond with found in game Super Credits.

Then there's the newest warbond with weapons that are overwhelmingly mid with one decent gun that we downplay because if alexus the neighbor killer sees us having fun he has to intervene

I think a big problem with gamers is that the gamer community sometimes fights for the right thing, but also sometimes is INSANELY privileged.

This is why I feel like Helldivers 2 is “fairly” monetized. It doesn’t feel like they’re ripping me off or bugging me for my money. And that feeling of fairness is why Sony’s meddling hurt so much.

The fact that you didn't even mention once Darktide for any comparison really goes to show how well it's been doing

Hi again Mr Brickster, it's your least favorite Gunfire Reborn Shill back at it again, and this time I'm gonne let you in on one of my personal favorite builds which I have affectionately termed the "Crackhead Tortle"! One of the characters within gunfire is a tortle who primarily uses speed in order to power up his secondary ability which is a heft P U N C H! This means that if you combine movement speed scrolls or dash scrolls along with his primary talents like "Dark Tide, Wave-breaking Blow and Gradual Progression" you can turn into that scene from Revengance where Raiden is pummeling Senator Armstrong whilst also moving too fast for any of the enemy ai to react! It was once again fun to send you this comment and I wish you the best mr Big Brick Chad. I look forward too seeing you again on your next video :)

Don’t forget they haven’t reinstated sales to countries that don’t have PSN, which could imply the PSN account requirement has only been postponed.

I believe an important argument for why they get away with selling armor with stats, is that for many armors you can get the same thing for free, just with different skin. Example Groundbreaker set from Democratic Detonation. Medium armor with engineering kit passive. You can get medium armor with that same passive in the free warbond, which only looks different

I've been chasing the dragon that is ME3's multiplayer for years. Nothing has ever come close for me in terms of pure enjoyment and wacky co-op combat. Playing a Krogan vs playing a Volus vs playing a Geth in that game are all such wildly different experiences - and that's even before you get to weapons. Well, Helldivers 2 is close. But my wallet is thankful it's no ME3 multiplayer.

The reviews would probably go back up to positive a lot quicker if steam stopped region locking the game and Sony completely abandoned the idea of account linking instead of just postponing it. A lot of divers (myself included) jumped the gun on changing reviews to positive when Sony made an announcement but hasn't actually taken any noticeable action except post pone the account linking for now.

Bro wants to block Warframe out of his memory entirely

Wait hold the fuck up, is it Brad from Poorhammer at 2:46 ? HELL YEAH

Hey man, I've been going through some shit, but then I saw you upload and it made me feel slightly better

As of the day before the upload of this video 3 more countries (now 180 in total) were added to the list of countries where it is impossible to play Helldivers 2. Sony SAYS they'd go back on their BS, but they still have not DONE so. Until they make a 100% backtrack then they're just talking out of their ass.

A lot of goodwill is also burned through constant weapon nerfs while the underperforming weapons are not buffed enough to compensate. Unfortunately, the weapon balance decisions are made by Alexus Kravchenko, who’s notorious for destroying the beloved player features and balance of Hello Neighbor 2 before he bailed on the project like the tool he is before it released. And now it looks like his cheese touch is molesting the balance of Helldivers 2. The Sony debacle simply finally woke people up from their honeymoon phase to realize that the game balance is completely whack and gets worse with literally every balance patch (and it has ever since the first one).

"Is it a lot of credit?.....not really." 😂😂😂

I liked how did this video. The quality of your videos gets better and better. The trend continues.

Honestly, even without the whole Sony/PSN situation, Arrowhead is massively shitting the bed in just about every way they can currently.

Guys we have NOT won yet! 180 countries are STILL not able to purchase the game! Sony could still pull this shit again! It's not over until they relist the game!

Never playing the game, but really into Warframe, he said “this shouldn’t go unnoticed” I said “improved cape physics “ then was sad when it wasn’t the odd guess I had come up with😊

Dude I can’t even get through one damn mission with a 4090. Crashes every time

Absolutely disgusting behaviour from Sony, They should be ashamed of themselves.

First?

I rarely comment on youtube but wanted to say the mix of you and voice over game footage is great

16:08 fire emblem battle preparation music my beloved