Helldivers has a problem, I have solutions | Helldivers 2 

Yeah, it's not like it's too hard that I can't run diff 9 or 10 with but it's just not fun to play or even to shoot. I still able to run high diff with any stupid weapon but I need to duck, to avoid, to runaway most enemies all time to finish the mission, which not fun at all.

Fighting the enemy should feel like "Not one step back" instead of "Not one step forward"

What always bugged me, is how the devs design all these assault rifles with 30 rounds magazines in an horde shooter, which usually takes 1 magazine for 2-3 enemies. It's baffling to me.

Arrowhead, please listen to this man. This is what the community has been wanting forever, delivered in a very clear and positive way.

I would prefer if the devs would stop using the excuse of "realism" as a cudgel to bludgeon the players over the head with only when it proves to a detriment to the players but not use the "realism" cudgel and have it apply to everything else in the game. "We changed the ways flames work because we don't think it's realistic. By the way, you can't climb or land on that rock because we think it would limit the fun of the game."

Big ass hunk of bug flesh and chitin, makes no sound when charging at you, full force. Flying creature named "Shrieker" does not shriek at all, even just randomly. DRG however has great sound cues and understands that it's important. (Mactera grabbers are very distinguished.)

You wind up just wondering why you're even there--the spaceship is the one getting all the kills, why don't we just go back up there and pilot the guns? It'd be more impactful than any of us going boots-on-the-ground most of the time, lol.

Standard Arrowhead response: “We hear you and we have decided to nerf the ammo reserves more we also took away your ability to run for more than 5 seconds”

Enemy call ins is the worst design of the bunch, the entire reason to avoid combat. I understand the desire for realism by making enemies do instant call ins upon contact, but there needs to be a long delay before these units arrive, maybe even cancel the call in entirely if you wipe out the squad. I don't know what the best solution is, but as it stands the moment you engage in combat you get heavily punished. Edit: Many people are suggesting how to deal with call ins, I already know these methods but that was never the point I was raising.

Yeah, I quit three months ago when they dropped that "spawn rate fix" that resulted in endless waves of enemies just spawning out of thin air and increasing the less players were in the game. I played with 1-2 buddies and very rarely we got a fourth to fill out the team, so duo runs were our usual. And the way the spawn rate "fix" worked was so visible as soon as the third buddy dropped off - as if a switch was flipped, the enemies just spawn TWICE as much. When we're three? Manageable, engaging, fun. Two? We're running out of ammo just by fending off the harrasser chaff while desperately running from objective to objective. And the developers agreed, hey, this is too much, we'll fix it in the next patch. It's been three major patches in the row now, no such fix - no, the REVERSAL of their "fix". All these random nerfs nobody asked for like the flames change, citing REALISM for changing it... Armor does nothing to protect you against flamethrowers, because steel heats up and cooks whatever's inside, and chitin just straight up evaporates and bursts when impacted by the flame jets used by any kind of flamethrower. Meanwhile Hulks just incinerate you with a glance, through any terrain, ditto for all the other spewer enemies on the bugs front. Realism for thee, not for the opponents, helldiver. Arrowhead are just screwed in the head. There's no way around it. They have their twisted, strange idea of what the game is supposed to be, they seem to loathe the fun players were having with an awesome horde shooter on their hands, and they will go against all logic to crash and burn their runaway success into a niche indie game for masochists that they seem to want to stick around and praise every terrible change they make to the game. Shooting paperclips at a tank and hoping it explodes is hard, but it's neither effective nor fun, and you have to be completely insane to do so with any hope for success. But that's what Arrowhead want you to do, it seems. I wish I could just play the launch version of this game. I played it nonstop for a month, to the point my hands and wrists were hurting from mashing keys. It was such a good time. Whatever they're doing with the game now, I want no part in.

I remember, a while back, hearing the general concept behind the "balance" being like rock, paper, scissors, with the enemies being scissors, helldivers being paper, but the helldiver's guns being rock the enemies have all been getting bigger and sharper scissors, but the guns are all being made smaller and weaker rocks, so eventually there's a point where the rocks just don't matter against the scissors

5:48 to add to this, they gotta add an audio queue to the bile spewers. There's no way in hell a creature that big moves around as silent as a ninja. I've literally been assassinated by them. They don't make any sounds like footsteps or any other bug noises until they get ready to vomit death all over me. That whole experience was immersion breaking

I bought Darktide recently and its soundscape vs the soundscape in Helldivers couldn't be more night and day. Helldivers, oftentimes things spawn and you just have no idea you're about to be facing 3 chargers. Darktide? EVERY enemy special has a sound cue. Dogs howl, Mutants roar, Trappers laugh and charge their net gun with a distinct loading sound, Monsters bust through the walls with all the commotion you'd expect. The ONLY enemy that doesn't audibly make itself known MUCH is the Daemonhost, Darktide's version of the Witch from L4D, and even that has whispers you can hear and is surrounded by green fog and is VERY OBVIOUS. It is MEANT to be avoided and does an AMAZING job at conveying that by being nearly silent. ONE enemy in Darktide is quiet. Every single other thing that poses a genuine threat to you that's not just a horde enemy is OBVIOUS and it makes the game so much more reactive and fun. Even in the hardest missions with absolute chaos going on around me, I hear that Trapper net gun and I know its time to disengage from the main fight and go get that little shit. Chargers and Bile titans should be stomping and making noise, chittering and screeching. Hulks and Devastators should be clanking and talking in Cyberstani. The only enemy that you can justify being as quiet as they are in Helldivers are the Stalkers, and even they should have a "pounce" sound where they're about to get you. Why? Because its *FUN*. Darktide is also about expendable soldiers being sent to do impossible tasks, and it feels both so much more earned when you win and so much more deserved when you lose. Helldivers just feels like a dice roll of "are we getting spewers this match so that means my guns are useless? Did too many titans spawn so now we're dead?" Darktide its like, because of the audio and cues, I know what's happening in the absolute chaos and can respond to it and if we play it right, we win. In Helldivers, it just doesn't have that. Too many of XYZ and not enough ABC means you lose in Helldivers, NO MATTER how well you play.

Devs are so scared of OP strategies because they think it will make the game repetitive and people will leave; So they end up nerfing everything forcing players to play the exact way "it should be played", leading to players experiencing repetitive gameplay, and then leaving the game. Its natural (and good!!) for metas to form and for some stuff to be busted (and then get boring). All they have to do is release more cool stuff to play around when players get bored with its not that hard lol.

Biggest complaint I got going into anything that challenged me months ago when I was playing was that my 'primary' weapon I wasn't primarily using. It was the stratagem weapons that I was carrying and using most of the time. The RR, AC, Flamer, etc. were all weapons that was being used most of the time and the 'primary' was what we used to conserve ammo on the stratagem weapons, while the 'secondary' was a "I'm all out of ammo on everything else, this is my desperation weapon" and melee was just there to mess with teammates.

I hope upon hope that things move in a better direction, cause there's no game like Helldivers 2 to replace it if it sinks.

Just to point out AH excuse of realism. In the patch notes it said the slugger got more spread..I repeat THE SLUGGER WITH SLUG SHELLS GOT MORE SPREAD

I agree with everything here. My favorite bug shooter was DRG and they exemplify what you're asking. Sound design of enemies kept them from sneaking up on you. Weapons were weird and it helped to create fun and interesting loadouts. Encounters with enemies resulted in fire fights and allowed for the individual to feel like they were a damn war god. The weirdness helped exemplify team cohesion by individuals being able to look at what others brought to the table and decide how best to compliment one another. I hope they take a better look at their game and how other horde shooters function instead of chasing whatever direction they think they should, because something needs to change. I've got nearly 700 hours into this game and with as much as I'm rage quitting, I don't think I got many more left in me.

You are at a restaurant, eating a deliciously juicy cheese burger, when the manager walks up to your table. You smile at him, because you are thoroughly enjoying your burger. He smiles at you. The burger is taken from your buttery hands, the bun is peeled off gingerly, and the cheese is scraped with a knife. The manager states that practically 30% of their burgers are ordered with cheese, and it's a problem. Is it a big problem? He doesn't know, but he's come to fix it for you. In place of the cheese he spreads a thick layer of some kind of greenish brown paste, replaces the bun, and gently slides the burger into your hands. "A burger for everyone is a burger for no one" he says with a smile, "We are so glad you care about our burgers and will strive every day to earn your buck." As he walks away, your bewilderment only grows... the... thing in your hands now smells sharply of pig shit and you think something is MOVING in that freshly applied paste. So what is next? Do you take another bite? These days I wish that if a developer reserves the right to change a product after it has been purchased, the customer should be allowed to reserve the right to instantaneous no-questions-asked refund. I payed for a cheeseburger, not swine scat. Yet, there is no way for me to go back to my cheeseburger and I'm stuck with this awful feeling in my stomach.

Sadly, I don't think Arrowhead wants to fix the problems. They want some perfectly balanced approach that can't happen so...

The railgun wasnt a crutch, it was a wheelchair.

hit the nail on the head the helldiver lacks lethality while the enemies have more to spare, it would honestly be more fun spawning as a hunter to insta gib helldivers while dying on repeat than to be the helldiver in that exact same scenario. Somehow the devs find this their grand vision and I think a big tell on this is Joel's role, the fact that he is the center fo attention as the enemy shows that the devs care little for how the player feels and they wanna feel good killing the player. I think helldivers 2 is the embodiment of making a game for yourself and no one else, and I don't see how this changes. Their company motto is literally a game for all is a game for none, on the flip side a game for one is a game for none. If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound.

The problem I see is that all those changes we need to make the game fun again and balanced in its own way, would require a complete change from AH, not just "oh we are sorry you dont like this one change, we will take a look at it again, thanks for you feedback.", they are STILL nerfing weapons based on popularity instead of asking themselves: why are 95% of the players using the same 3 guns. Or why everyone is taking the grenade pistol. I really thought we got over this months ago, pretty sure there are post from Pilestedt agreeing that popularity is a bad metric and that they should indeed bring all other weapons up before nerfing the only good ones. If you want to have fun and feel powerfull even in helldive you gotta bring the best tool for the job, they are still slowly taking away the best tools each patch and then wonder why we arent happy with the butterknife thats left. And then there is those weird nerfs like flamethrower where I am like: "Who green lit this????" I wish they did more with planet types, biomes and mission types. Have fire damage break armor faster on ice planets (fast heat change -> cracking) but fire duration be reduced due to low temp, on flip side have fires burn much longer on hot planets but do less armor dmg (heat resistance). Be creative with additional biomes (metal dust planet that buffs arc weapons in some way, poisen gas planet with gas clouds/wells that when mixed with our gas stuff reacts for an even deadlier one, enviromental factors that can kill us but when used tactically can massively help with enemies, true smoke planets where you and enemies can't see more than a few meter and everything becomes melee combat, idk be creative instead of nerfing shit because "oh look, user data spreadsheet says this is too op" ) If they really want to do spreadsheet balancing, they should make an extensive testing tool that allows you to spawn each enemy type stationary and then test each weapon for: - weakpoint shots to kill - normal shots to kill - average shots to kill - average kills per mag - average kills per gun - time to kill (only interesting for things that don't die one shot) - time to empty mag by killing - time to empty gun by killing - for weapons with aoe, do an aoe test - for energy based weapons add an additional stat for with overheat+reload and max heat+cool down Do this for all weapons and all enemy types and you have a solid base on what each gun is best at and at what they suck at, from there you can now adjust parameters and see if the result is what you want and if it impacts something else you didnt expect to get hit from it. A small damage nerf can have drastic changes for one enemy type when suddenly you need 2 instead of 1 or 3 instead of 2 hits, so although it can be less than 5% change it can result in a 50%-33% nerf towards a certain enemy, this table would show exactly things like this. For all I care, just put the testing range into the game, and let the players do the testing. Just one weapon and one enemy type with different enemy formations to mow through (cricle, half circle, square, close, far away, whatever really), and then record all the stats above, and make a leaderboard for most of them like (headshot, total kills, time needed, etc). You get a huge dataset of average gun performance and peak gun performance, and the community gets something fun to do and be competetive about besides just grinding the same missions over and over.

I agree with all of this, yet still have no faith they will make lasting change for the better. Key phrase there... Lasting change. I'm sure they will make a small buff patch soon after backlash, but I believe they'll be back with more nerfs as this has been their pattern.

One thing I think needs to be changed is how patrols work. As Reginald said there's no much point in engaging bases around the map that don't have an objective in them because they just increase the random spawn density on the map for no benefit. I think enemy bases should be the primary source of enemy presence on the map, and taking them out directly reduces the enemy's ability to generate new patrols. To keep things interesting maybe the dropship/bug hole cooldown timer decreases and the duration increases as bases are destroyed. That way you can clear sections of the map to make maneuvering easier but if you mess up and let reinforcements get called you're in for a hell of a fight (assuming Reginald's suggestions of actually being able to beat the ensuing waves of enemies are implemented).

I like the fantasy of having to use all of your shit to effectively fight the enemy (and I mean completely use all of your ammo, stratagems, and grenades). I think Helldivers achieves that most of the time for me where I feel like I'm having to play optimally to barely survive--which I think is good. BUT, I think the form that barely surviving takes is often unsatisfactory. I want to barely survive as in "I used all the tools at my disposal to hold onto the objective just by the skin of my teeth," and not as in "I used all the tools at my disposal to kill 2-3 bile titans but now there are 2 more and I'm out of shit for 180 seconds." I like that enemies pose a threat and are hard to kill but that's only as fun for as long as I CAN kill them. I feel like I'm properly engaged while fighting, but taking fights often necessitates running away in the middle of them. So I fight, feel good, run away, do nothing till cooldowns refresh and ammo is restocked, reengage, repeat. It would be nice to feel like I could reliably finish a prolonged fight on top with the tools at my disposal. But a long fight is almost always a losing fight. I think one of the biggest issues to me is that some weak spots don't feel weak. Bots do this mostly ok where a few shots to a vent or a hulk's eye take them down in a reasonable amount of shots. But on bugs I can throw an impact in a bile titans fucking mouth while it's spitting at me and it doesn't even flinch lol. A bile titan only falls over if you put two eats and a nuke in its mouth, and that's just not sustainable if there are more than 2 in an area. I think they could implement the damage buffs proposed in this video by just making weak spots take more damage. Have cracked armor actually matter, let some primaries do appreciable damage to a hulk's eye, maybe let a well placed rocket down a bile titan's esophagus blow the whole thing up from the inside, or give us some more soft squishy parts or exposed wires to shoot with primaries. I want good Helldivers chaos, but I want to be able to carve a path through it with the right amount of knowledge and some well placed air strikes. As is, even if I play well--or perfectly--I don't have enough firepower to kill everything that comes at an objective on higher levels. Running away shouldn't be a near-necessity in all fights longer than 3-4 minutes. I like your 70% number for fights you should feel reasonably confident in winning--even if there's a drop.

I hope Joel sees this It has a lot of good advice

Two things: If you make the game "easier" by having more lower enemies, that would naturally encourage the lower difficulty playing players to try harder difficulties, leading to natural progression, while also making player feel powerful The idea of armor and durable damage and what not, extra stats they have for weapon which are NOT shown to the players, is imho the worst decision that they made, not only does it create confusion, but it makes you feel cheated, resulting to "why the f**k does this weapon exist". Information is key for the understanding and lack of, leads to the feeling we have right now.

Using a fully automatic shotgun with basically Dragonsbreath was my ultimate American finds himself in Starship Troopers fantasy. I don’t have that anymore.

It's crazy. The patch actually did come with some fairly neat changes to things and strategems, but all of that is overshadowed completely by AH's inability to leave good stuff unfucked with. 7 and 8 is the hold ground and have fun fighting difficulty, but they want to force the run away meta of 9 and 10 onto lower difficulties. Just, why?

What bothers me the most is that THIS is the SEQUEL to the first Helldivers. They've already done it right once. At first, I couldn't help but gush at everything that paid homage to its predecessor, but the fresh coat of paint has slowly given way to a malformed and mishandled version of the game which I can only assume was built by people who don't quite understand Helldivers 1. I am fully aware that the entire game had to be adapted to a completely different project of massive proportions, but the execution in some key areas is poor, and Arrowhead has been stumbling through patches ever since launch with inadequate awareness and testing of the impacts. Keep in mind, I don't work at Arrowhead, so I have no idea what is going on in there. All I know is the results that they give us. And they're not too great as of late. One thing I never see people talk about is the hellpods. They accidentally ruin flamethrowers for the sake of "realistic" flame effects, but I STILL can't kill a charger with my perfectly placed gigantic orbital bullet of a resupply pod that I aimed oh so carefully. (Enter tiny orbital precision strike). The Element of Supplies is a fun achievement carried over from the first game, but the new Hellpods are just pipe cleaners against anything other than a Helldiver. The existence of the achievement proves that they didn't just forget about hellpod lethality, but intentionally removed it. Not to mention, you COULD land on tanks and kill them before, but I haven't been able to do that in a while. First Galactic War Hellpods would delete anything you dropped them on (save for the bosses), and it was balanced because it costed you a Stratagem drop. We used to throw our friends at the scary enemies in front of us, but now your Hellpod is better steered away to preserve your paltry life count. This nerf to such a core aspect is deliberately unrealistic and spits in the face of the first game. And this is not the only instance of this. Reinforce clutches? Have a team-wide life count and two minute cooldown instead. Have fun carrying your dead team on your back for that cooldown, alone, as we send in a limitless amount of bad guys to your exact location because they know where to find you. And then we'll give you ONE teammate back at a time. And dying mattered in the first game. Yes, you had infinite lives, but to be dead meant one less Helldiver on the ground. One who could provide support, cover-fire, and most importantly, reinforce the team. Because when the last man fell, the mission ended in failure. You NEEDED TO KNOW the Reinforce code like the buttons on your controller, because speed and accuracy was the only thing preventing mission failure. Yes, dying matters in the sequel, because one less Reinforce charge leaves you closer to the cooldown. But more often than not, I don't care about the life-count until it's low because I'm too focused on not dying to something stupid and having to inconvenience myself with picking up all of my gear. That's what death feels like in the sequel, an inconvenience until the cooldown hits and the Super Destroyer leaves. Then you are ill-prepared for the monumental feat that is surviving a game that is against you in many frustrating ways. No you can't stim while being juggled in the air. No you can't stim until you get up. Sorry, that last laser finished you off. Oh, the ground is so undemocratic that it negates my Democracy Protects. But wait, there's more. Resupplies? Lets make that a team-wide stratagem that you can't bring extras of or not at all. I thought they wanted to give us more choices, not less? Stratagem stacking? Oh no we DEFINITELY can't have that. We'll only acknowledge it's existence enough to remove it, because it's too OP to bring four of the same thing. It's not like you pay for it with less versatility or anything. Upgrading stratagems directly? Nah, we decided we want to give you one extra bomb in your already high count bomb runs, because one extra cluster is guaranteed to kill the 8 dudes who just ate all of it and more. Isn't that so much better than being able to make it anti-tank or reduce call-in time or anything meaningful? To be fair, most of the upgrades are good (like +1 extra eagle uses). But that one is just a joke. And also I still can't directly upgrade my Stratagems and weapons. Easy to use support packs? How about you do the mount-dismount dance on your buddy instead. You don't need a reload right this second, do you? A Lift-850 that runs on fuel? Hell no, we spent 100 years devolving it into the Jump Pack with a painfully long cooldown, because we can't give you actual mobility. We're too busy trying to take it away with MORE ROCKETS. Interesting new or old enemies? MORE ROCKETS! (Also Impaler, credit where it's due) Booster choices? No, we'd rather make your alternatives so weak that all you can do is run the main ones. 1-4 extra reinforces is an equal tradeoff to Vitality or Hellpod Space Optimization. Talk about not wanting us to funnel into the same gear. Did Arrowhead forget about boosters over in the balance department? And since I can't keep my hands off of this post, let's talk about Stims. In the first game, you had a big healthbar split in two. Once you dropped below half, you were downed and had five options: 1. Fire your secondary to defend yourself 2. Throw grenades 3. Call in Stratagems 4. Spam X to get back up 5. Crawl to a teammate so they could pick you up There were no Stims. No personal healing items. So how did we veterans survive combat in the First Galactic War without our power drugs? Simple, we didn't need them. You never needed to eat Rocket spam or survive 20 Hunters all lunging at the same time. You were never THAT doomed. So what does this have to do with Stims? I believe they are a glorified band-aid crutch both figuratively and literally, and for both the players and Arrowhead. They enable one to survive most anything non-fatal, effectively making you near invincible whilst active. They allow you to make mistakes, because all you have to do is shove some juice into your neck and it's all better. And on the flip-side, it allows and requires the enemies to be more offensive and lethal, because they either need to drain your Stim count or blow you off the face of the planet to kill you. Thus, you must eat Stims like candy or succumb to the un-limited Rockets, Lasers, Hunters or Shriekers or that one Stalker who thinks he's the main character because Arrowhead why did you think your little acid spit and run guy needed to get an Elucidator in one hand and a Dark Repulsor in the other? If you took away Stims and replaced them with a passive regeneration, many Helldivers would not survive high difficulty missions, let-alone complete them. One bad move and the Rockets fly. Too stressed to outmaneuver the Hunters and they jump you. Far enough away from the waterfall of bug puke visually but not enough to escape it's far reaching Fascism, which engulfs you and reduces your body, armor and all into a puddle of acid. Stims were a very dangerous design choice that needed to be handled with the utmost care, and unfortunately, the game and it's players are now addicted to it, contrary to what Permacura says. One does not simply "fix the game." There are good reasons that the sequel can't replace the original, and it's not just because we can't all scream at the same screen. Helldivers is at it's best with a full party on the highest achievable difficulty. And Helldivers 1 is laughably nightmarish, but miraculously possible. The enemies could so easily overwhelm you, but you never felt utterly helpless, because your weaponry was just enough to hold them back, and until the last man fell, your victory was inevitable. Even when things went from bad to worse to literal Hell, you couldn't help but laugh and scream anxiously at the hopeless situation as you fought tooth and nail to survive, because dying mattered. Helldivers 2 is just helplessly impossible due to the unrealistically weak weaponry leaving you ill-equipped to deal with the constant Hell that is patrol and reinforcement spam multiplied by player nerfing attacks like rockets and acid all so that they can chew through you before you are allowed to Stim. The major differences between the games boil down to control: In every conflict of the First Galactic War, Helldivers have near-complete control over themselves (looking at you "can't jump"). Rarely did one find themselves in a situation where they couldn't at least do something to help the team, even as a last stand. Death was an inevitably caused only by a series of unfortunate mistakes. Every conflict of the Second Galactic War is best avoided, because control is very difficult to keep a firm grasp on. To be ragdolled is a death sentence, and not the one where you can fight back. To be stuck in or under anything is death. To have your Eagle kill 5 of the endless horde in front of you is a waste better avoided by doing it yourself. And if you aren't running, it's because you have no legs to run on. Most Helldivers die in an uncontrollably inescapable situation. I love both games and I still play the sequel. For all of its bugs and disfigured features, it is still a very fun experience if one chooses to accept everything as difficulty and works around it. What I don't understand is how they have such a great reference and an already awesome game and all they can do is take away what identifies it. Holy Hell this comment is nearing the length of a video essay script.

I think just about the last thing you said is the biggest problem. High level games are pandemonium and the only way to really win them is to play super conservatively and know when not to pick fights - which isn't fun. Particularly it's not fun because when you know what you're doing it's not really all that challenging most of the time unless you really get pinched. But even though people can play lower level missions where you can push and can take all the fights you want, and not have to deal with the big elites, they don't for whatever reason, there's like a psychological refusal for it. Or it's because it's become boring because it's easy.

Without watching the video, I think honestly the fact we keep having to negotiate IS the fucking problem. We move from niche to niche, strategy to strategy in an never ending attempt to escape the nerfbat. I've already played games like that. The only way to stop it is just to stop playing. ESO, a MMO with this problem finally broke after they realized they just couldn't survive another mass exodus. This game I don't think will be in a position to survive the slow bleed it's generating.

If they want the game to highlight the horror of the situation, why not just....make the game scarier?, imagine disembowling a titan and haveing it still lumber at you, have your diver have even crazier voice lines, they have them, but my character tends to move on and go back to "hell yeah, fuck bugs" have them genuinely lose their mind, start shaking, their rapid breaths, winces of pain, heart beating through their chest, mixing with the sound track and playing in our ears, as you the player force their body to just keep moving forward, idol animations playing, lets say when you stop they put their hands on their knees to catch their breath, until you put in another input, head hanging low, just trying desperately to pull air through their helmets filters, add new crouching and laying down idols aswell, during quiet moments have our diver maybe cry for a moment breaking down before pulling themself back together, and more battle damage, completely cosmetic, but scratches, missing bits of armor, torn fabric would go a long way to showing how horrible this all is, while keeping the players fun intact, you can let us be a badass without making it a power fantasy

balance is the fastest way to make a negative and toxic community

The devs' idea of fun is watching players ragdoll cartwheel into orbit. You know, JuSt LiKe ReAl LiFe.

I would love to see a system in Helldivers 2 where killing hordes of enemies actually impacts the outcome of the war. Currently, the recovery system of the planets feels stagnant and uninspiring, as it’s primarily dependent on completing missions. Enemy numbers and kill counts often don’t matter, which discourages engaging in combat and encourages players to simply run away. This approach can be frustrating for those who prefer a more action-oriented playstyle and enjoy battling the enemy hordes. My suggestion is to introduce a planetary kill counter. For example, the enemy could start with a set number of troops-say, one million-to defend or attack a planet. If players inflict significant casualties, the enemy’s ability to defend the planet would be severely compromised, and the planet’s recovery progress would take a major hit, potentially even dropping to zero. However, the system wouldn’t stop there. Enemies could launch reinforcement missions via supply lines to replenish their numbers, thereby boosting the planet’s recovery once again. This dynamic would add depth to the gameplay, making every kill count and giving more importance to the ongoing battle beyond just completing missions.

I really dislike that their weapon balancing is simply just nerf the guns that work well and don’t buff anything else. As of now, most ARs are hot garbage. They’re supposed to be for getting rid of the small enemies, but with such low magazine sizes and only having a few mags, you run out of ammo after 1 minute of fighting a singly bug breach or drop ship. The and we shouldn’t just be, “use the stratagems”, because then what’s the point of having the AR then if using stratagems is the only viable answer for fighting the horde of smaller enemies?

My requirement to primary weapons are: 1) explosive and/or medium penetration; 2) staggers enemies; 3) can oneshot basic enemies in a body; If it lacks any of this, for me they are unplayable in a curent state of the game. That is why I can't play with any assault rifle and SMG. Even Incendiary Breaker is not satisfying enough

Whats funny is, the game DID have some mechnical depth. Mantling out of bug holes was an interesting skill based way to maneuver around enemies. Butv ofcourse, that got removed very early in the games life.

Here’s hoping they do literally any of this

I agree with what you said about how you feel playing this game: helpless. I've said this before and I'll say it again, they also need to STOP taking away our mag count. Current military basic combat loads are 6 mags. 6 MAGS AT LEAST. I refuse to believe battle-hardened space Soldiers will bring less than 6 mags to an environment that we see is getting more and more dicey.

It's becoming more and more apparent that there is an internal disconnect inside Arrowhead, between the game designers (the ones who come up with and create content for the game) and the final pass and balance team not to mention the disconnect with the players, while yes they obviously have a vision for the game it feels alot of the time their vision is in direct oppoistion to what the players want. I mean I would seriously love to hear the thought process behind creating a flame weapon themed warbond and 2 days before it's release completely rework and nerf flamebased weaponary to the point of uselessness. Also something that I feel no one is really talking about but it very much stuck out to me. Did you not think, especially with the wording used in the preview trailer for Esclalation of Freedom "have we told you everything ? of course not" and "there are going to be many more surprises in Escalation of Freedom", that we were going to get more ? I honestly thought this was going to be the equivelent of the Helldivers Mobilize warbond or the release of a bunch of stratagems or something. Don't get me wrong the new content is good and very much needed, but I'm still waiting for the "surprises". However credit where credits due, setting up the feedback form for the people in the community to voice their opinons is an amazing thing to do and something that hardly any dev teams do, they are trying to listen to us and take on our feed back, unlike the Darktide team Fatshark... who wrote a post to us saying they are going on their summer holidays and not to bother them...

Honestly thank you for making this video, it's beyond refreshing to hear someone put forward suggestions for fixes for the game's issues rather than just posting an unconstructive rant. I really think you're right on the money with some of the changes you've suggested.

I completely agree with all of your points, I've been playing since launch and have to force myself to try and not play the game but it always felt like AH didn't want the game to be too fun. The Crossbow and Eruptor are great examples of this where their intrinsic traits were neutered because some reason. They try to make the game balanced by throwing off the balancing and reducing viable options to force us to use bad ones. They have no idea how to balance a weapon around their intrinsic traits because the Liberator Concussive lost half of it's rpm from base and their solution was to increase the damage which isn't what they did when translating the Defender into the Pummeler. The Plasma Punisher had a unique skill ceiling that made it interesting from other weapons and instead of leaning into that AH increases the projectile velocity instead of rewarding skilled players. Any weapon that is bolt action is at a disadvantage out the gate because it is better to just reload them before you are empty which the game discourages. For some reason the best armor to run against the bugs is explosive resist armor because bile and spew is explosive damage for some reason. Why don't I get a mission modifier for when I am only going to get Bile Spewers, the whole map would light up green and they have medium armor so I have to build my loadout because I might have a chance of getting all Bile Spewers, and on top of that, why can't I see a few Bile Spewers without having them be the only spawn do the bugs not understand what a support role is?

I've been playing it since a few days after it launched and I agree with everything you said. The latest patch is awful and ive run into multiple code bugs already and game crashes. One bug was the Hulk's flamer firing through solid cover (enormous boulders in this case and just cooking me). Another is still present whereby shots do not line up with your crosshairs - hit boxes are all over the place. And that really does mean the difference between you pacifying an area to complete an objective easily, or your shot just not hitting and the bots/bugs letting of their signal for mass reinforcements to arrive in less than 10 seconds which screws up your whole plan. I'm tired of the bugs heavy chargers having the agility of a cat where before it was more akin to a charging rhino. The 500lbs bomb is just a puff to the enemies if it isnt a direct hit, the results are far too inconsistent. Then theres the insta-spawns right at your feet where the enemy just pancakes you amongst other things. Weapon nerf is growing really tiresome when all of our enemies are tank types who sponge up all of your shots and utilise mass wave attacks. The rot started when the devs nerfed the railgun - its a railgun, how could it possibly be nerfed? Its a RAILGUN. The whole idea is that is stupidily OP and thats fine when a either a single player or a team of four have to content with literally hundreds of armoured enemies. The only way ive found to be somewhat effective at level 8 diff and above is to stay with utilising combined arms warfare (which makes sense anyway), but even that now just isnt enough and the fun aspect of it all is going dry for me. Worse to come, the devs have given the bots mechanised MRLS which means they'll be vacuum bombing the living crap out of us as well. In summary, its gotten tiring because the enemies have a vast spectrum of overkill units for multiple scenarios and we dont: Bots - -Persistent on station air cover from their gunships. - Two tank variants. - MRLS. - Hulks (heavy armoured) - Chainsaw Chargers with hand canons (medium armoured) - Walkers with heavier canons and now missiles attached to them (medium armoured). - Jumpers that eliminate all distance ans cover between you and their advancing hordes. They also blow up in your face if critically damaged. - Double bladed bots that just charge at you and slice you up/stab you to death. - Heavy machine guns on heavy armoured units behind massive metal shields. - Similar units, no shield but mounted rapid fire missile systems on their shoulders and machine guns on their arms. - Two types of grunts, both equipped with automatic rifles and both of which can operate stationary machine gun emplacements. Bugs - list of their capabilities especially after the patch is too long, im not going to bother 😒 Helldivers: - Rifles that use half a magazine of ammunition just to kill one or two enemies. - Orbital ships with fighter aircraft yet we cannot main air superiority. Makes no sense what so ever 😮‍💨 we need a new strategem that can give us air assets that provide us air cover for a few minutes. - Restricting ammuntion a bit too much, again makes no sense. - weapons that are rountinely nerfed when our enemies totally outnumber us, have better armour than us, completely outgun/outclass us, and all focus on mass wave attacks.... - weapons that dont actually hit the target in the crosshairs. - armour and clothing that catches on fire at the sligjtest ember. Even the new stuff they just released, you're just able to burn FOR LONGER as opposed to not burning at all for a certain duration. Makes no sense at all. - our stagger is not a stagger at all but a total ragdoll and we can hardly do the same to our enemies without the use of heavy weaponry/strategems and even then its sporadic at best. Im getting bored of typing now. 😒

this is probably one of the more well thought out ideas to me. i feel they should limit how much elites there are while each elite doesn't truly 'disappear' until x seconds later with higher difficulties lessening the time.

i swear, they need to hire this man the ideas and the indepth analysis is so professionally done!

Thank you Reginald for making easily one of the best videos on this topic. I love this game to death and I want it to succeed but the community is so negative it makes me not want to play anymore sometimes. Your actual constructive feedback and suggestions are perfect and something other people need to learn from and it keeps me hopeful in this game moving forward. Keep up the incredible work.

Everybody, please interact with this video! Push the algorithm so more people can see this and spread awareness of these issues!

I agree, at least mostly. Less ragdolls would be nice, especially on stalkers. They ragdoll and stun you for so long that its effectively a stun-lock. They block any shots to their face with their claws too so they just don't die. Even when you do finally land hits, they go invisible and regen all their hp. Stalker Rant over. All the new enemies, except the alpha warrior, that were added in escalation of freedom ragdoll you. Impalers ragdoll you whether or not their tentacles hit. Missile tanks basically always one tap you, but if they don't you get ragdolled and throw into a wall and die from the impact. Alpha commanders have their charge. Rocket scouts are the least offensive of them all, but they do as well. General ragdolls are just too common and overtuned and there are lots of just stun locks when they do hit you. Less big enemies and more hordes is a good idea. Part of the reason heavy armors can just suck so hard is all the big enemies just run you over no matter your armor value. You can't get away from the 20 heavy enemies. You seem to have to dedicate at least half your stratagems to anti-tank to stand a chance but its often still not enough, so 3 slots is basically what is required. While I do think the breaker incendiary nerf wasn't really that bad, its partially because it never affected big enemies anyways so its nerf changed almost nothing. More interesting small enemies would also be very nice to fight, alpha warriors are a good step in that direction all though them being faster than most armors is probably a bad thing. Holding your ground being viable would be nice. Less ragdolls would help this as you wouldn't get throw 50 meters by one stalker smacking you through a wall. (Ha, I'm still ranting about stalkers). Less big enemies would also help this. Something like giving the hmg emplacement a shield like the ones bots have on their emplacements could help. General tankiness increase for mechs would also help with this. Heavy armor truly feeling heavier and allow you to take shots would assist this. I don't actually mind how effective any weapon we currently have is against any single enemy. I view the balance of the primaries as okay, until anything big shows up. Secondaries having basically the same firepower as primaries but just having less ammo is also kind of weird. Support weapons do actually seem to provide support at this point. They end up just being the primary. That's fine with something like the stalwart or autocannon which both actually feel like they were more meant to be bigger primaries, but this applies to all of them including the spear or recoilless. I will also just say, I feel like part of the overly negative sentament of the player is people who don't vary their loadouts at all. I've met some who still use nothing but the quasar for their support weapon and constantly complain about the one nerf it got. It would be nice if more people varied their loadouts more and maybe making more small enemies and less big enemies would help. It was state that the reason the eruptor shrapnel was removed was it randomly one shotting team mates, which was not fun I will say. Getting killed because my team mate shot something even remotely close to me was not fun. I hope they bring back the shrapnel eventually once they can make that not happen. I am also of the belief that the flamethrower change was very much an engine restriction to prevent the torcher and crisper from killing heavy enemies. I hope they figure out a way to buff the flamethrower to compensate for this or manage to update the engine so they can have different fire.

I agree with all of this video. The amount of chargers, bile titans and other elite heavy bugs that show up on and each require a specific amount of AT hits in very select spots as they run or move across the map heads bobbing side to side so you miss is overwhelming. It's coming down to ok use the quasar, shoot the bile titan in the head, it missed just enough to not count as a headshot, run as it cools down. As it cools down you get rolled by the chargers or bile spitters that make no noise. Ok survived just enough to use the quasar again, annnnnd the bile titan takes it to the face but it needs 1-2 more shots to the face as you get rolled or just run laps until the cool down is done. Rinse and repeat for 40 minutes.

I’ve defended the game and devs and tried to work with nerds and enemy buffs. I gotta say I love the game but you’ve nailed it. The fun is being rinsed from the game at an epic rate. I glad you are nailing the issues and making good suggestions

One of the things I miss from helldivers 1 is the ability to upgrade your weapons and stratagems. Mostly every primary could be upgraded to have medium armor penetrating along with other buffs. It would also give us another use for requisition slips and/or medals

There's player feedback forms in the Discord, right? We should get the word out there, I think. The devs need to know.

I want a change on 500KG, though really powerful, it's aoe is questionably small. If it’s me, I will make it orbital (so it can only have one use even with upgradd), make the explosion really really big and has shockwave that push you to the ground. And it will have diabolical cooldown and droptime that every time you drop 500KG it will be a spectacle. And I agree on the visual and audio cues part, I can’t count how many times I died because a charger snuck up on me and crushed me. I think the only enemy that should be allowed to do this is stalker, but put an audio before they attack or something. I think this is why I prefer fighting bots, and still I have a lot of problems with unseen missiles. Please, make everything have distinct noise.

the fact that one persons ideas could save the future of a game is crazy... Reginald is the person that really wants to fight for DEMOCRACY!

We really gotta link this video to Arrowhead Devs, in volume.

Really like the idea of adding new dangerous *light* enemies, instead of just constantly releasing new armored sponges

Thank you SO much for the crossbow aoe mention

Very well said, you made a great point about the game lacking “skill” weapons.

I don't know for sure, but I've always felt like some call-in's are automatic. Like, it _appears_ that you didn't kill the enemy on time. But in reality, the game is keeping a clock going, and it's decided it's been enough time, and they call it in the second you make the mistake of shooting at one of them. I don't know for sure, but I've played 200 hrs, and I swear, some call-ins are basically instant, triggered the moment the enemy becomes aware of you, and some call-ins, you can stop them and quench the fire before it starts.

Finished a drop recently and commented to my fellow divers: "My finger is tired from clicking so much." There is a point where killing an enemy is kind of a chore, there is a loading hint about sending the eagle back when there is "downtime" but often there is barely any and its 40 min clicking nearly constantly. I think I had the Cookout shotgun equipped, its bad against durable targets that need to die *now* or when the map seed spawns something like Bile Spewers, hell even Hunters don't always die with the fire dot. This is something the I-Breaker had over the other guns, straight up comfort! And something the original Breaker had back then, before its ammo got slash in half. Not to mention the performance, fps getting lower and lower...

Very well said. It's incredible how well Darktide tells you what is happening, be it sound or visual. The only times in Darktide I feel like I couldn't react to something in time is when an audio cue bugs and doesn't play. Even in the most chaotic T5 Auric Maelstrom situations I always feel in control of what is happening and know what to do. About the call-ins. I think the game could stand to learn stuff from Deep rock galactic. That game has a good flow of downtime and hordes, while also making it so killing the horde is always the best option (save for one or two game modes). This game would work much better if the most dangerous enemies were small and fast to kill. Missions only get hard when they become a slog and you cant kill enemies as fast as they spawn because everything is so tanky.

This is great feedback, i hope you used the feedback form they just opened up om their discord to get across these thoughts as well in case the devs dont see this video.

Can you imagine if Fat Shark had the IP to Helldivers. They would take all the stuff they learned from Darktide like sound/visual ques, customize weaponry/character, class system, melee weapons, urban warfare, badass sound track, etc and bring it to Helldivers. I don’t think I’ve seen them make usable vehicles but I’m sure they can figure it out.

I appreciate the wave of these videos because they do make valid points that need to be considered in the future.

I still think a big part of it is mission design. The maps being laid out in small isolated clumps pushes the idea of run in, complete the objective, and run away. That can't be fixed unless a lot of stuff is changed, however at the very least I would like to see more forced enemy drops when mission objectives are in progress or completed to make the big battles happen (alongside enemy comp changes). Soil Survey is a good example of this, although imo the drops are too close and don't let the players fortify and defend their position the principle is correct. If patrols are changed to have it be much easier to stop a breach/drop happening, there needs to be other ways to make battles happen.

I share your sentiment and want to add that I feel like we could also do with a recharging shield mechanic, not as in the strategem, but like on every armour by default. Would be very useful in situations where you get attacked from behind and have no time to react snowballing in you getting attacked in all fronts, or in other times when you need a little bit more forgiveness in repositioning. Popping a stim for every bit of damage because you are afraid you might get one shot or stun locked in the very next encounter is rough. There's actually a GDC talk on god of war, and how the change from an isometric view to a on shoulder camera angle made so you get attacked by enemies from behind and could not do anything about it, and how visual and audio cues helped them solve it, as well as enemies do less damage when the player is not looking at them which is pretty smart, and made the combat feel more fair

I was wondering why I was having more fun in Deep Rock Galactic than Helldivers. There's not enough PVE engagement! Hell, I had to do a Personal Order today where I had to kill 10 enemies with the Expendable Anti-Tank, and the EAT were HORRIBLE. The splash damage from the rockets wasn't even able to kill SCAVENGERS. *SCAVENGERS.* I think all of these points are pretty accurate. Helldivers 2 isn't a COOP PVE, it's more of a "Run away from your heavy orbital and air strikes that do the killing for you while you have barely enough munitions to defend yourself against the fifty bugs/bots swarming around you and tearing you apart like a piece of paper." And considering they JUST released a new difficulty, with nerfs to a lot of weapons, that doesn't really bode well.

I 100% agree with this video, however if they were to implement these fixes, they would need to make it so you still cant win every time. Helldivers is a game where youre not supposed to win every fight or mission.

The railgun days were fun days 😔

I'm still having fun with the game but I do agree there are ways in which the game could be improved. My big problem is 99% of the "criticism" I see online is "reeee game bad fix game reeeeee" and it just gets so obnoxious. Its nice to see someone calmly break down exactly what the issues are and *why* they have those issues. Good video :)

I agree, the railgun nerf was the start of all this

Very constructive and positive commentary on the current gameplay. I feel the same, I play stealthy as I love being a sniper in games, fortunately for me this works currently because it means I'm already actively avoiding fights, but its meant to be a hoard shooter... I'd love it if most weapons/strategies were viable at the higher levels and the choice was more on what downsides you were will to accept, high damage and accuracy, but slow RoF or slower ergonomics. Snappy weapon but not as damaging. Diversity of choice.

Welcome back Reg, it's good to see you still care about this game despite the obvious problems it has. Many of us love this game and what it has to offer, but with every update, it seems to be one step forward and two steps back. I'm personally heartbroken with what they did to my baby, the flamer, I loved that damn thing it felt so good to use. It was my favorite weapon because it was effective against almost everything, at least with terminids. The way it is now... you put it best, it's just not as fun. Fun is more important than balance. Balance can be had but if it is at the cost of having fun, then what is even the point? Hope the devs are listening because you speak for all of us here, we aren't happy with the game we've grown to love and that should be incredibly alarming for Arrowhead as a business that relies on us to keep going.

It if they did these things, the game would be really really fun like DEPP ROCK GALACTIC. It's clear the Devs for HD2 don't play fun games like DRG, or even their own game come to think of it. ESG hiring practices at its finest.

Here are some Ideas 💡 For Bots: More focus on light infantry. Rocket Raider's launcher should be a One-Time shot like an EAT. Rocket Devastors should eventually run out of ammo. No one likes being pinned down by a Horde of Rocket Devastors that fires an Endless Salvo of missiles at you. Mini-Gun Devastors should also run out of ammo or have their barrels overheat. For Bugs: Mostly good as is, though the Hunters needs just a little nerf, either nerf their unnatural ability to land headshots 80% of the time or nerf the duration of their slow because that's what the little bile spitter is supposed to do. Nursery/Blie Spewers need to have a cool down of how often they can spew bile before they have to wait to spam their bile at you again. Bile spewers need to be less tanky from the back and sides, like a Hive Guard or have less of them Spawning in a bug breach. How a Bile Spewer can tank an EAT to the face, but a Charger can't is beyond me. Stalkers should have Glowing Green Blood and leave blood trails. Stalkers should also be able to mimic another Helldiver's Voice and Ping. Imagine a Stalker Pinging you with a "Follow Me" ping. Secondary Objectives: Since Devs wants us to rely more on Stratagems, there should be secondary objectives that allow us to use Certain stratagems, give more Charges to existing stratagems, or reduce the cooldown of stratagems and etc. One big thing they do need to do though, is to make it so that the "Guard Dog" is able to replenish ammo from ammo packs and not just the Supply Pack. So fucking stupid I swear. And they wonder why no one uses it, such a simple fix. Also, maybe it's time for a Flamethrower and Arcthrower Rover.

I definitely agree with you bro. When engaging the enemy I feel as if I am constantly forced to face enemies that my weapons pose little to no threat to, and I am perpetually forced to rely on my stratagems. I feel when I go into a game I have to rely upon either a setup totally based on fighting bigger enemies (who are too numerous for me to finish myself anyways) and allow myself to helplessly get get swarmed by the little guys, or I build a setup designed more so to handle the smaller enemies and allow myself to get slapped up by the bigger fellas. I kinda feel as if I’m doomed to have to flee either way… but with the introduction of the impaler running has also become disincentivized. Stay and fight and die to the horde, or run away and get juggled by the impaler until all my bones are broken… I love this game, but I hope for some sizeable changes soon. Great video bro.

Whoever is recommending the nerfs please sit down and play the game after you nerf something in test and tell the players/community "Yes I am having fun". If you can't do this then that nerf is not worth putting into the game. The player base wouldn't be half as angry if the devs could actually explain what method they're using to decide on buffs and nerfs. Just test the freaking nerfs with a controlled player base before rolling them out and got some honest opinions.

this right here I want to fight the enemy and feel like I'm doing something. It feels like the devs want to give the enemy a ton of advantages, but then when we have advantages a bunch get taken away. "We're nerfing flamethrowers and fire in general because muh realism", but then they make the 500kg feel like a Nerf foam rocket rather than an actual piece of ordinance, which is unrealistic

Darktide gameplay will always win me over. Hopefully, SM 2 will have an amazing gameplay loop.

This is one of the best detailed takes I've heard about this game, Made me realized how I always want to switch things with my loadout and armor but end up using hit and run support weapon focused loadouts since any other playstyle feels almost punishing to do

I love in this game how the powerful anti tank weapons that you can reload have 10 minute cooldowns, so if you die you have to run into the hoard defenceless that just killed you to try to retrieve it just so you can maybe kill the bile titan that’s camping the objective, so your forced using single shot stuff that takes 10~ seconds to deploy just to hopeful get it in time and hit your shot.

Wouldn't it be cool if heat based weapons could melt armor plating, making the enemies vulnerable to light pen weapons when they normally wouldn't be?

Very good ideas. I do personally like the playstyle of being more of an artillery observer, but it does get old having all personal weapons be so inneffective. Having some more diversity in loadouts, specifically the share of power between stratagems/small arms would be nice. It should very much be more viable to just play the game engaging at least most of the enemies you see, as this is how most people probably want to play a game like helldivers

Spectacular video, so frustrating so see this happen to this game. The railgun point of having a weapon that you can use to FIGHT was brilliant.

_"BLLLLGHH!! sKiLL iSsUe!! sKiLL iSsUe!!"_ Isn't it fun seeing that in every f**king comment section when people say this game is shit?

The supposed "vision" for the game conflicts with the live service aspect of the game. What's the point of new enemy variants if you're supposed to run away from them anyways? What's the point of a bigger base if you're just supposed to toss your 380 and wait like you already do? What's the point of new weapons if they're not supposed to be any good? It baffles me that they expect these new additions to excite players when you're not supposed to engage with them

Power to the infantry!

Arrowhead can’t decide whether the game is a DOOM-style one-man-army carnage fest, or a MilSim where you are supposed to complete your objective with minimal enemy engagement. Arrowhead seems to be pulling the game in two directions at once, leaving the game in a VERY awkward state. There is a complete failure of leadership.

I miss the old crossbow, I had a lot of fun with it. Was it good? Eeeh it needed a little something but having a primary weapon that fired frag grenades was AWESOME. Now it is just eh. I mever touch it because it doesn't do anything. Why take the crossbow when I can just run Counter Sniper instead? But I have gotten really back into Darktide after the last update. I am hinestly disappointed in myself for brushing off the penitence update initially as well. So looking forward to to crafting update. My zealot has a collosal stockpile of weapons I really want to thin down XD

The devs have a vision of players cooperating instead of being more of strong individual units. To have a compromise and make builds more diverse, the spawn rate adjustment should be a number 1 priority. That way you have players with more specific roles, like anti-chaff and anti-tank, and then others could have more niche builds like a support build. Then also instead of just making lights/mediums more common and heavy more rare, we could also have dedicated hordes with mostly lights/mediums and mostly heavies.

I think your section on problems was a liiiiitle overdramatic but overall I think you are right in your main point which is that lack of weapon diversity kind of kills the game. If i'm being funneled into the One Loadout for this One Enemy I'm fighting, I'm of course going to get bored of that after 3 missions max. Being able to pull out the flamethrower or not have to rock an AC every single mission is just a no brainer way to keep me at least a little more invested in the game. Personally, I'd love to see specializations in loadouts; some perks or extra mechanics for playing in a certain way.

I've been really wanting to get back into helldivers for over a month but the game refuses to not crash

I completely agree, and one other fix that I have seen many other players talk about is doing what you said, buffing/increasing damage for everything and really just making it all fun to use instead of nerfing it into the ground, but also increasing the amount of shit that can kill you, therefore you have the capability and tools to do what you want, and on higher difficulties when there are many tanks that are running at you, no matter what you have you can kill them

I completely agree. I really enjoy stealth against bots but partly because I probably won’t survive a factory strider death squad being dropped right on my head. And on the bug front, you can actually wipe out the entire map of bug holes, shrieker nest, mega nest using a single emancipator mech if you just dodge/ignore the bugs and move on to the next set of holes. Since there is not much incentive to linger there for too long anyway once you’ve unlocked everything and that lead us nicely to the severe lack of endgame rewards. This game is a gem in this era of gaming and i truly hope our constructive criticisms will help polish it.

You freaking nailed it. The part about more small enemies and less armored really hit home for me. I’ve wanted this forever. I’m tired of getting stuck bringing anti tank support weapons every freaking game. It gets old and I have more fun missing down massive hordes with the mg-43. Also can you imagine a liberator with lots of ammo that was actually powerful? Holy smokes how cool would that be?

Totally agree on the light infantry enemies point, some of the most fun I've had playing the game was being a machine gunner keeping enemies at bay to cover my team's movements against the bugs or catching a light automaton patrol off guard with a scoped weapon and ambushing them before they could call reinforcements or get close. Still, despite their weakness, I've still been mowed down by squads of MG raiders or packs of hunters that caught me off guard, so it's not like they're all on the same level as scavengers just because they don't have armor.

The problem with balancing this for the devs, I feel, has to do with the fact that the game isn't balance for the player to win all the time, as in other shooter games of the genre: Because we have the galatic war mechanic. I feel the devs want the player to lose too, so they can slow down the adding of new content.