Helldivers Reworking EVERYTHING, Challenge But FUN w/ ThiccFilA, CrazyMrPipz, Reginald, Phaseshifter 

Helldivers keychains and merch shop www.helldivers2shop.com/?ref=Thicc

There is actually a hidden difficulty in Helldivers 2, by having a full team spawn in the map, and have them kicked/disconnected in which the game director thinks that there are still 4 players, in actuality there's only 1 player active in the game. I had a lot of games where it's just super difficult to finish the match when squad mates disconnect randomly within 10-15 minutes into the match, to the point that you are hoping that your SOS Beacon gets to get a player to help you, but sadly not which happens to some of my games a lot and it is pretty annoying especially when squadmates crash their game sometimes.

IMO the biggest issue that hasnt been addressed and I haven't seen much discussion about is the consistently bugged enemy behaviors. Chargers: speed walking, drifting, animations being disconnected from hit boxes, ignoring stuns/emp, mountain goating up terrain they have no business being able to, etc. Bile Titans: head shot hitbox is effectively rng outside of the skill to point your AT of choice in their general direction, visually "stripped" armor still being armored and not taking damage from low AP weapons. Bots: Shooting through walls, gross feeling hit boxes when not at a perfect angle, etc. There are SO many examples of inconsistent behaviors or broken interactions whether its enemies or our own weapons and strategems that it gets really muddy as to what needs buffs or nerfs because the foundation you're basing changes on is constantly changing how things perform and interact. I know its likely to be unpopular, but I prefer the devs get the game to a solid point before making more changes. There are STILL support weapons that don't function with repacking methodology. (I haven't finished the podcast, sorry if this is already mentioned)

When a developer doesn't understand that you would want to use your 'primary' weapons primarily, you know there's a fundamental issue in their philosophy

If you balance around the hardest difficulty then that /ideally but not necessarily/ benefits every other playstyle- people who want to "Have fun" on a lower difficulty are actively choosing a difficulty that fits what they like- the challenge+reward that clicks for them. If you balance around 10 then people who just want to chill on 5 will go "Hey, it's moderately more chill around here now since our guns work :) Maybe I'll go to 6-7 or maybe 5 really is just the perfect place for me :)" If anything it'd just make the far-too-many difficulties make more sense because it'll actually be a sliding scale of challenge to pick from instead of just "Well the game only plays right on this difficulty because they nerfed everything, go any higher if you want to sweat" which is the vibe a lot of us non 9-10 players get- they want sweats to struggle their ass off and the trickle down effect is that anyone not in sweat territory gets to have less fun and have less difficulty options as well. I mean, if they balance for 10 and that makes 5etc easier..... so what? there's 5 levels higher than that? People who want to go rambo on some bugs or bots will like getting more than normal samples for their experience? What's the downside here? Currently it's "feel like you're loadout is worthless but there's like 5 enemies so it's whatever" or "feel like you're loadout is worthless but there's like 50 chargers so backpedal I guess" so what we have for balancing around 5, assuming that's actually the case and that it isn't just "balancing around spreadsheet numbers", clearly isn't working.

My only guess with the Gloom will introduce the pitch black modifier on some planets. Because the Gloom actually covers the Sun by it's fog, would be interesting. And if the Devs want to put up a test server. Why not use Planet Mars as testing grounds for weapon tweaks. You know, a damn shooting range, like almost most shooter games have.

I think they should add Rodents of Unusual Size (ROUS) to the fire swamp biomes that are hostile to everyone.

Super Mega automaton base which starts at level 5 and can grow to max level. Modular sections of base can be semi-randomly switched out and more sections are added as difficulty increases. Includes secondary objectives incorporated into the base, including mortars, eyes, AA-defenses, and perhaps even a stratagem jammer or the rare gunship fabricator section (gunship fabricators with actual defenses). Primary objectives are "destroy dropships", "destroy idle tank reserves", "destroy scout strider reserves", "destroy orbital gun", "destroy ammo depot", "destroy fuel reserves", etc. Destroying the base requires completing multiple primary objectives. Complete with trench works, minefields, bunker checkpoints, barbed wire. Map size would be the same as a blitz. Almost guaranteed spawn of SEAF anti-air, SEAF artillery, or SEAF radar somewhere around the outskirts of the base. Base is always in the center of the map. Lots of z-axis gameplay and lots of bombardment + explosions. Pairs well with eventual other vehicles. Extract is always inside the super mega base and is some repurposed automaton flat area or landing pad. I think such a scenario would be immensely pleasurable to turn into a giant crater with heavy bombardments and then assault into to eventually finish off. Perhaps a good scenario for smoke, since it would have repeated uses for the many required assaults and defenses.

ok we need to remove the insane damage calculation system. its the reason all the balance is messed up

One of my many issues with Arrowhead are their statements trying to justify their terrible balancing, like that they were "Balancing for the sake of balance..." If things were balanced for the sake of balance, I would expect weapons to have very similar stat lines. Unfortunately I can read (and create) spreadsheets. You have the Dominator, and the Liberator penetrator - both filling the medium 1 pen primary weapon niche - one has 3x the mag, 3x the DPS countless one shot breakpoints and twice the total ammo capacity. The other has... faster bullet speed and a little better handling, I would DIE to hear the explanation for how these are balanced. Then you have Punisher Plasma, Scorcher and the joke that is the Purifier. Pretending there was any kind of actual balance philosophy that would lead to the Scythe, Lib pen, lib conc. being in the state they are in while they have Scorcher, Dominator Sickle e.t.c. is an insult to my intelligence.

Hearing Reginald talk about enemies being more telegraphed and me remembering how last night we were 3 helldivers in a level 10 defense mission holding our ground until the very end...when the bots decided to just drop on our backs twice! So they could freely destroy the generators, so we played like hell for nothing, it's hard to want to get back at the game with these situations

it would already help if reinforced enemies cant call in new reinforcements or give it a cooldown. also a stratagem that counters gunships or shriekers to not always have anti gunboot weapon in your loadout.

I need a long and meaningful progression system. Get 500 hulk kills to get this bum ass cape, get 5k kills with autocannon to unlock variable scope or even a skin for AC . Donate slips or samples to get rewards or bonuses like +1 stratagem or whatever. It's really not that hard to do and it's not some revolutionary thought, it's obvious and it should be here from the beginning. Instead they added a new secondary objective on bots that you just throw 500kg at and forget about it. How is that engaging?

I swear we wouldnt even be complaining about nerfs and balance if they released effective stuff post release. We have all this excitement packed into levels 1-25 and then it just stops and we're waiting months for sidegrades to things that we unlocked during that period. I wanna be as excited as I was when I saw a high level dude using the orbital laser. If level 1 = strafing run and precision strike, and level 25= orbital laser, bombardment and patriot mech, then level 125?! Should be black hole generators, healing ray guns, carpet eagle bombs that devastate whole mega nests... But it's just not like that.. he's still using the same top tier stuff from what he unlocked 1-25. I wanna be as excited now looking forward as I was when I started the game and their releases have just not lived up to that, and not done that. Imagine, right now that instead of the airburst, we got the carpet bomb. Instead of the anti tank mines, we got a 4 man tank with two machine gun turrets and a cannon that can two shot bile titans and impalers. Do you think we'd still be complaining, enough for the CEO to step down and feel like he has to buff lower level stuff?

I think primaries should have a broader range of AP values instead of Max AP3. At the very least, the range should be increased to AP4 since the Devs want to keep AP5 strictly out of Primary weapons. Eruptor, Purifier, can be AP 4 for example

Factory strider but with an AA emplacment instead of its BS 1 tap canon sounds actually fun

1:11:11 ... Low gravity, rich atmosphere, rocket boots? ... Well, i guess "for rock and stone brother" ;D

Slugger was S-tier but not because it was amazing but because the other options poor and there were only a few

"Time to kill is too high" Adds behemoth charger, elite commander, fully armored strider, factory strider, tank with no heat sink and impaler Makes sense

Everyone just needs to say it like it is: the enemies are bullet sponges. Every PvE game that increases difficulty with bullet sponge enemies has lost the majority of its player base, Helldivers 2 included. That majority does not like to learn the meta and read patch notes, they want to jump in for a few hours with their friends and blow up aliens with rocket launchers on difficulty 6 or 7. All these players left because the fun weapons were nerfed and the heavies don't die with one rocket launcher.

If they had a “zombies” type mission. We are in a base. We can activate defenses in the base like turrets, mortars, shields, doors. All that would be cool

I like how at 52:13, the 1-2 combo was so nasty, the Hunter just decided it has reached the peak of it's hunting life and decided to banish into nothing

22:15 props to Pip for power through whatever drink his wife brought him 💪

I think there should be more direct player interaction thats not just standing next to eachother and shooting enemies. Carrying mission equipment together, using a big turret or vehicle together or healing a teammate wthout using up a stim. Just things that you cant simply solo real quick and for another reason than being overwhelmed by too many enemies.

Helldivers 2 - Future Content Suggestions 1.) All Heavy Armor sets should have an invisible passive perk that makes you IMMUNE to ragdoll effects. I think that’s fair compensation, considering the worsening of stamina draining and regen when wearing HA. *(Also, since the Devs love implementing ‘Realism’- when you’re wearing HA, you can’t get ragdolled, but if you fall into water that you normally could briefly swim in before drowning, you now immediately sink like a rock and for sure die). 2.) A Booster that deploys a Smoke Bomb on Hellpod landings. *(A new variation of the currently existing Fire Bomb Hellpod Booster). 3.) A Stratagem Backpack that gives you two different visual enhancer capabilities: Thermal Infrared mode- shows enemy heat signatures. Echo Location mode- gives a green nightvision-type filter, and shows visible pulsating wave links of enemy sound. 4.) In the planet selection screen, on any planet that we can deploy to, give us 6 RNG chosen Stratagem options to DONATE Requisition Credits towards, making them potential benefits in that planet’s missions. The RNG pool of selected Stratagems would be Orbital Strikes, Eagle Airstrikes, Sentry Turrets, Mines, and the Exosuits. Whichever of those 6 stratagems receives the required total Requisition Credits FIRST (pooled from all Helldiver donations), that Stratagem becomes the chosen extra Stratagem that all divers for that planet have available to them. *(A rewarding way to make more use of our Requisition Credits, and giving the Helldiver community the CHOICE to decide what extra Stratagem they want for a planet. It should take 500,000,000 RC to unlock that extra Stratagem for a planet. With the 50K max amount of RC from each Helldiver, it would take 10,000 divers to fulfill that donation requirement. I chose 500 mil as the required number thinking optimistically when the player count rises higher than where it currently stands). 5.) Add a Transmog system- allowing us to apply the ‘visual look’ of any armor that we want, while still getting the armor rating & passive perks from another armor set. *(In particular, Horizon Forbidden West added this feature several months after the game launched, and it made that game much more enjoyable- you look exactly how you want to look, and still get the armor perk benefits that you want). -Fan of your channel, Cheers!

Should be fun but challenging. FUN needs to be the main focus with challenging being the secondary.

I want the environment to be more dangerous for the enemy... for example, when you explode barrels next to bots or when bugs step on gas cylinders, half the time they don’t even look wounded

1:39:51 Reginald is absolutely right. The bugs we keep seeing implies that the system in place to test things is not working. They probably test each teams changes individually, merge them all and do not have a real person testing things between code merge and release. A big release like the update would have various teams working on different features and just getting them ready for the same deadline without necessarily working together.

They could atleast put both more common and medium enemies in the higher levels, rather than more heavies like alpha commanders and less common enemies. Would have been awesome looking when A single Alpha commander is able to call and surround itself by a lot of chaff, which looks more menacing and engaging, rather than seeing like 3 alpha commanders moving together with less chaff around them. Same applies to automatons, where it's just plain annoying to deal with a lot of devastators and seeing almost zero chaff around them where it just feels like I don't see the old enemies that you've faced in the lower difficulties anymore, less variety means less engaging enemies. i want to see both alpha and normal brood commanders play in the same match. And open top and enclosed scout striders working together rather than seeing one type of enemy with more difficulty. Makes things less engaging when playing in higher difficulties now. And also, it is just plain annoying to see a single random chaff roaming around the map by itself where they can deal a lot of damage like headshots to you out of nowhere because they simply just lone wolfing, which is pretty annoying to deal with in higher levels when you are trying to run away to end up running into more trouble.

I had some very similar ideas in my doc for this game Support missed divers (endless mode) In back of super destroyer hangar. Load up a crate with support weapons and stratagems to drop on to planets where divers missed the extract. Loading screen is the Eagle Ones carrying crates down to planet and dropping them off. Missed divers fight waves of enemies and can collect enemy samples to get resupplies. See how long your team can last and your score is tallied up at the end and put on a leaderboard. Super Simulations To the left of the ship manager terminal. A full virtual reality rig used for weapons testing and testing out “possible threats to liberty” (future content). Spawn in enemies with no AI to test weapon breakpoints and stratagems or new environments and content. There Divers can also prove their worth in official super earth approved challenges.

Its not hard, but sometimes it feels unfair, especially when there's two gun ship facilities next to each other. We had a game with poor intel, we dropped in, next to a facility, 8 gun ships straight away before anything was called in, once they started firing we had patrols moving in with hulks, devastators and armoured striders. Staggered and ragdolled into the next dimension. I would consider myself a veteran and i regularly do difficulty 10 with not too much difficulty if im honest. But against the bots most of all, the weapons feel shit, the stratagems feel kind of shit. We need an anti air stratagem specifically for these facilities, trying to shoot those gun ships down while you've got 40 American devastator snipers cross mapping you, staggering you, and those gunships also doing the same, on top of hulks, tanks, and those new bloody armoured striders and those factory striders is not fun, its not hard, its just a retarded mechanic that the devs thought was good. Jesus Christ sometimes you cant even outrun it or outheal it, even if your movement is good, because the stagger and ragdoll is so high.

Helldivers 1 made it perfectly managable to control the reinforcements of enemys. There were two significant clues: Visuell and Audio wise and they took some seconds so you were able to identifiy them in time and counter their call for help. Also they needed line of sight to do this. HD 2 is completly messed up regrading spawns and all the others stuff of course.

Even if I could one shot a Charger in the face with the AC and my primary could mow down anything small with a shot or two, this game would be SO fun! Then just throw 15 Chargers mixed with Stalker spawns in the breach and BAM! You got yourself an insanely fun game again.

Another note. I think they are afraid to add more enemies because of the instability of the game. Same reason they don’t have vehicles or multiple mechs

So, as just an idea, I think we divers should be able to use whats already at our disposal to be able to stop enemy reinforcements even after they've been called in but it requires timing and some specific use stratagems. After all, we can close bug holes and destroy drop ships and fabricators, so why not? For example, I think smoke effects should block the bot flares. We can use either the eagle smoke, orbital smoke, or smoke grenades. For bug breaches, it would need to be high explosive, like HE grenade, 500kg, or orbital precision. As this tactic would require specific loadouts it would keep "balance" between a divers ability to stop reinforcement and the enemy being able to increase their hordes and challenges. AH wouldn't need to add new equipment to do this, but they would need to change some functionality of the strats to make it happen.

Loved the discussion, excellent takes and ideas.

With that human blender mission. I played one where I accidentally baited a hulk who smashed it. Ironic no? It should have sample retrieval part where you have to turn it off and then has to be destroyed.

If you want something to make it harder for bots you can make it so there’s like lieutenant bots that come in some waves and they can call in strategems on you. So they could direct bot mortar fire, maybe call down their own EMS strike, or something. I can just imagine you get a wave coming at you and you take cover and right in front of you lands a small ball with a laser that goes up to the sky that is some other color than red or blue. And you know that neither you nor your team mates threw it. The most powerful things in this game are the heavy strategems that Helldivers can call in, it would be incredible to have that turned against you. Then you kill their captain or whatever and they can’t do it again until there’s another captain. Maybe instead of the captain only spawning in reinforcement or patrol waves there’s a captain at each major command bunker. Makes him a sniper target, and makes it so you have to properly plan the attack.

An easy win for a starter: remove the immediate damage fall-off, give us more ammo per mag and make us a bit tankier. This could be done next week. Then rework the design for the weapon balance.

I hate the idea of having some sort of staged boss fight. If you had them occur more organically and they happen at increased frequency at higher levels then it would be much better. Think like a new urgent order and they add on time. Your fighting bots then an bot battlecruiser comes in orbit over your objective. Your destroyers can be seen trading salvos to and from the destroyer and now you have dog fights in the air around you and bomb landing on you. You need to defeat the troops landing on the ground before they over run the bases you just cleared out. That sort of experience would be interesting especially if it could cause you to not have access to certain strata because eagle 1 is needing you to help clear the skies so she isn't shot down or the orbitals cannons are busy fighting the space fight so you only have the gatrking cannons or something. That to me would be much more interesting than a contrived boss fight especially since it does not fit the sense of the game.

Just caught this video on my feed today. I love the flamethrower, I have so much fun melting everything. It really sucks that they took away the charger leg damage. Also I agree that there was no need to change the flame animations. It looks like Duke Nukem now.

there's so many ideas to take from zergs and starcraft --- one basic ones is just pre-hidden bug groups under ground and if you are not paying attention to the ground and you walk over them, they will spawn right on top of you.

How to make higher difficulty exciting - Smarter more adaptive and unpredictable enemy behaviors. Same enemies but maybe we are close to a brain bug and they are all crazy smart.

Balancing around lvl. 7 sounds perfectly reasonable. I honestly only play 7 and above unless I’m just pissed off and want an easy lvl. 6 on bots so I’m not rag dolling all over the map. Anything under lvl. 6 hasn’t even really existed to me after the first month of playing the game.

I think it could be pretty cool if certain planets had more modifiers that affected weapons (think hot and cold for laser weapons). An acidic planet might adversely affect standard bullets (no I am not trying to be 100% realistic) so you don’t take standard weapons. Electric planet gives arc weapons more dmg or chains atks to enemies, etc. This would encourage people to actively change their primary load out not just for mission type and enemy faction, but also for planet terrain.

“Epitoem”

I think an anti-air dedicated sentry would be sick. Model it after a Flackvierling quad 20 from ww2 or just copy past the Gatling and put a dome on top like C-Ram. AP4 with 2 min cooldown but shoots flying enemies only.

No thank you to the suggestion of Stalkers in bug breaches lol

Special mission for Sample collection:Achievable Solo , Ramped up Difficulty for Team Reward for said Mission Sample unlocks for Sample Colored Armor Set: 100 Super Samples=Helmet the same color of the sample 250 Super Samples = Armor the color of the sample 300= Cape : Pic the Design / Emblem for it 400 You get to add a perk to your Newly built armor set : i.e. 3+ Grenades ,Stims, Peak Physique,ect

about 7 vs 9 or 10: on 7 you can actually bring a loadout to your liking and still feel like it's going to work out. On 9 or even 10: you really have to have a well rounded load out, best coordinated with all the players and even then you can get overwhelmed it feels like. Even one mistake can break the mission on 9 or 10. I reckon that's the difference, especially for all us after work divers.

I like how Pipz dissed folks in the beginning about skill issues then gets real quiet about how to make the game harder🤣

1:30:38 Those ideas mentioned are not necessarily easy changes. Number change is potentially as easy as typing a number. Reginald understands the software development process. Changing those numbers could be released in 3-4 days. But reworking systems takes weeks or months. Not saying I believe they will fix it, but expecting fixes to just happen is unrealistic.

Definitely an underlying issue in game design. Factory Striders are fun to fight with support weapons. Take out the top turrent with AT, snipe out the MGs, and then move in for the kill. The stratagems conflict with the support and primary weapon play. Most bots seem designed to be destroyed by removing them limb by limb. Hulks are designed to be killed by a primary weapon and teamwork. The problem is removing bot limbs is harder than killing them. Circling a hulk is only needed if you did not bring your AC/AMR or stratagems.

Stats should not be different based on difficulty, ever. It's the leg-up this game has that makes me like it more than most, and it's the only reason I've put up with all these nerfs. EDIT: Hell yeah! Serious Sam mentioned, lets goooooo!

I kind of wish that AH would adopt some of the stuff (Enemies/weapons/scenarios) from other games like Deep Rock Galactic and/or Left 4 Dead. It be crazy if the Behemoth would give the same vibe as the Tank. Also there would be special mobs/traps that would heavily encourage divers to stick together. If you played either of theses games, you know what I'm talking about.

We don't need weapons to be better as a whole, we just need all the weak weapons to be somewhat on-par with the stronger ones (e.g. Auto Cannon, Jar-5 Dominator etc.) or at least have a viable niche

Phase shifter absolutely nailed it with his comment that people do not feel listened to. Everybody out here in the player base for the most part has some kind of a day job and a lot of us deal with clients or customers. Those people will put up with a lot of crap as long as they feel like you are listening to them and trying. Moment they feel like you are not listening to them. You lose them as customers and clients. If arrow head hears one thing from this podcast. I hope it's phase shifters commentary about player-based not feeling listened to

Regarding charger rework. I think its something like half a mag to the hulls back and 2 mags to a charger from a liberator to kill. If they just do away with the durability damage it would be about the same. (Wiki has charger butt listed at 1100 hp, dmg is 60, so 1100/60=19 rounded up) They might be considering putting it more in line with the hulk… or fixing some of the issues. But realistically, there is a lot they can do to make the charger feel better. They could make it a bit clunkier, so its easier to get to the weak spots, for example.

When people bring up primary weapon balance, I do understand the dev sentiment that they shouldn’t be your end-all solution and strategems should be used whenever necessary. But, it’s almost gotten to the point where I dont bother using anything besides a blitzer so i can move and zap a couple of times. I love the smg’s but I need to use almost an entire magazine to clear out a group of like one warrior and a few hunters. I usually bring a recoilless rifle and have just started using that on any medium sized enemy, since its almost a waste of time using more than one rocket on chargers/bile titans when I have Orbital Railcannon and Precision Strike. I loved the first Helldivers and I desperately want to love this one too, but the devs insist on making the game hard for the sake of being hard. The difficulty should come from the number of enemies and how they effect your ability to perform objectives, not how pathetic you can make a gun feel in combat

I like the discussions about breach alterations. Only Brood commanders and warriors should have the vocal or chemical mechanics to call in. The chemical stream they spew for the call should start as orange and shift to red as the call hits its “completion”. Stop them before it turns red.

Home from work level 5 for mindless killing as decompress. 7 and up for more serious gaming. The amount of levels is fine as i see people diving on the low levels for fun, leave them alone.

is there a way to highlight the box of the speaker? not a stream breaking thing but definitely convenient for the viewer. not too thicc, not too thin border

Impalers should just hit hard (50% of your HP) but not ragdoll you. They will therefore punish you for ignoring them or just trying to run from them, but they will allow you to actually respond to the threat.

Helmet flash lights for that pitch black mode so you can see a bit without aiming down sight. I'd like them in the game period honestly.

If the higher difficulties were only for the sweaty players then why could you originally only get super samples in difficulty 7 or above?

Fromsoft is known for “Hard but fair”. High levels HD2 players want more hard, but most people want more fair.

5:30 in terms of difficulty, the game isn't hard. Teammates make it hard. Like, friendly fire is funny occasionally, but man, I have so many instances of teammates who have no regard for when and where they call in an airstrike or a 500kg or just napalm the whole team. And how often I'll say "Let's sneak past this patrol" and one guy shoots them as we're 90% clear. Or just how often people don't reinforce and run off alone. But also Solo is boring, the social tab is still busted, and my actual friends abandoned ship a month ago and probably won't be back unless arrowhead fixes everything.

The idea that a singular Helldiver is worthless and it's his weapons that are actually strong is great. Having several respawns per mission reinforces that so well. I want this game to be harder in a fair way. I want it to feel like Dark Souls turned into a horde shooter. I want to feel character progression and go up against immeasurable odds, only making it out by the skin of my teeth. I really hope they can make challenge come from buffing our enemies instead of making everything we have feel useless against them. Player damage/enemy health is such a lazy way to achieve difficulty. If they're not going to have bugs at high levels have more health, they should stick by that and stay consistent.

And imagine using samples and medals to unlock attachments like bigger magazines or ammo types for your primaries to at least give them more utility. Yeah primaries probably shouldn't work on the Bile Titan, but if it was then it wouldn't be good for chaff so so you bring the support weapon specifically for chaff. There is just so many things they could do to make everything better instead of consistantly making stuff worse. I'm still new to the game, but I can see the pattern.

Personally, I feel bug breaches should happen further away. Let the enemies travel overground to the location to breaches.

I haven't been able to compete a dive past 6, and 6 feels like helldiver at times, never gonna get those ship upgrades

I mostly play level 7 and or level 9 . Knowing how to fight and having a good team is everything .. to me

38:40... like 5 orbital railgun shots at once. Even if that took 2 strats spots.

The problem is there is a disconnect between the type of game this is. Someone in the studio thinks of this as a special forces military simulation. 4 normal guys dropping in and having to sneak around to get objectives done. But the marketing, enemy design, telegraphed mechanics, etc portray the game as a horde shooter with weak point targeting and where standing your ground is the point.

Buddy was describing the eradicate missions

instead of taking out a stratagem --- say a planet have too many air defense so for X mission before you even enter and dive down - you cant select any of the eagles and have to make a build set up that is non eagles. equally - maybe there's too much storms or clouds what ever blocking for orbitals from shooting down so it is a mission that is none orbitals to shoot down -- and can only bring eagles - turrets and support weapon (turret and support weapons maybe also are in accurate when flying down)

41:35 How about new Stalker patrols (1-4) on higher difficulty, that really stalk you and when you're busy jump in from behind

Sort of breaks my heart to see the streamers putting so much care and love into HD2 content, when I feel in my heart the game is dead.

They don't need to "rework" anything. They need to go un-nerf everything all at once, and then gradually boost the guns nobody touches.

I prefer more mobs and new enemies to fight on higher difficulty than just having HP sponge enemies.

26:05 This texture of a blowed up Super Destroyer debris in the middle of the screen. It looks like ... a cow or a goat. Is this intentional??

What do you think about the current armor system for enemies? Do you think that if the enemy has a 1-2 AP counter higher than your weapon that it should block 100% of damage? I like DRG style where it’s a reduction that scales as the higher the enemy armor. It makes using an AR or other support weapon inefficient to kill with as opposed to impossible

Omg this guy with the attitude on “it’s not hard” bruh when they give us meatsaw bullet sponges

They should just add different modes. Arcade mode for the one we have now but before all the nerfs, and nothing but buffs for all weapons. And then a realistic mode in which developers can focus more on their milsim focus and tone down whatever they want for balance. Players can choose which ones to play.

Long term progression... ie extract with x100 high priority samples for an exclusive amour set !

I wonder if AH considered using Gen AI to synthesize the massive flood of feedback the gamers are serving up. Maybe they are just getting overwhelmed by now.

The vast majority of enemies need to be vulnerable to damage from most if not all primary weapons

Primary weapons on L9-L10 is pretty anemic at this point. With the amt of enemies they drop you'd either have to haveHMG/AC or bring lots of turrets to bring suppressive firepower

Did you guys see OhDoughs breakdown yesterday for fixing every weapon in the game ?

Ion storms do seem to show up when I really need to call down something….lol

I really enjoy these podcasts! Although I am moving on from HD2. What about having Crazy Mr Pips and Phaseshifter on to discuss something like Space Marine 2?

in my opinion on the bug side you are not fighting any heavy enemies anymore. its way too many small enemies on higher difficulty which is another reason why anti tank sucks. Its actually quite hard not to get relaods off with faster enemies. You almost need to run cookoiut or fire breaker, maybe dominator against them. And then the anti tanks are simply not economical. Flame thrower is still better just to kill the insame amount of chaff. If you see a charger just throw stun and orbital and its gone instantly. No reloading ect. Bile titan, also just 500 kg and orbital. So most of the time you are just ignoring the heaviest trying not to get swarmed by hunters haha

We keep saying they balance for level 5... I dont think they balance for any of the levels

Hi I usually play bots but the weapons are becoming unusable! They don’t work and the amount of enemies and there weapons what we are given can’t compete ! But what I feel also makes it worse is that people don’t play in a team or don’t know how to approach a battle. By taking out certain locations before you start a mission or start attacking ! There is a art to it

Lvl 10 having only rares and supers would be awesome.

Glad you guys touched on difficulty levels. I personally think having 10 difficulty levels is a poor decision, as it splits the player base too much. Difficulties should be merged into 4 as such: 1-3 = "Cadet" (recommended level 1-10, common samples) 4-6 = "Advanced" (recommended level 11-20, rare samples) 7-9 = "Extreme" (recommended level 21-25, super samples) 10 = "Helldive" (recommended level 25+, would love to see a new endgame resource added here) I think it would then be a good idea to have each tier unlock at the next level tier instead of completing an operation of the previous tier.

LET ME BELIEVE THE CHALLENGE IS FROM THE ENEMY, NOT THE DEMOCRACY OFFICER

Best meme was the hawk tuah one THICC posted last month.

I do miss the escalation of alarms in the first game. It encourage you to play more carefully as you crank the difficulty up. Heck, you could solo difficult missions if you knew what you were doing.

Any chance of getting this as an audio only podcast?