Helldivers 2 CEO is Saving the Game by Stepping Down
Vložit
- čas přidán 21. 05. 2024
- Helldivers 2 CEO is Saving the Game by Stepping Down
Ekko Vision Code: ohdoughplays10 ekkovision.com/?ref=ohdough
Creator Code: ohdough (for epic games store)
(ad)
Paypal: paypal.me/OhDough
►Twitch: / ohdough
►Discord - / discord
►Tiktok - / ohdoughplays - Hry
Pilestedt is one of the original founders and designers at Arrowhead that started the company right out of college. He's a huge part of why their games have always been so much fun. Hearing him try to get away from the biz side and back in to the design side is _excellent_ news.
I read the titles and thought Helldivers 2 was cooked. Then I saw his post at the start and realized the video title wasn't a joke.
I sincerely hope that Pilestedt will continue to make Helldivers 2 better, even if he has grand plans to make new games that will topple Blizzard.
Absol-fricken-lutely! Magicka was fun as hell! Missed Helldivers 1 completely somehow, but with him stepping down for this, I have high hopes!
CEO sounds like he actually PLAYS the game. With the big AAA studios, you KNOW their CEOs don't play the damn games.
Why did u lower case “excellent”
It's less "stepping down" and more "stepping sideways." Guy's still helping to run the company, just as the Creative instead of the Executive.
Yet another Pilestedt W.
He's also still the chairman and owner of the company, he's just stepping down from the soulless business side of it.
Literally the Linus Tech Tips route
"put me back on the front lines"
" You would have to drop down to private"
Instructor Zim intensifies
Pilestedt seems to be really in touch with what the game and community needs.
If he is the one that hired to head balance dev then this is a sign that Sony and psn is coming in cause they got a new CEO that will play ball.
@@MrWhateverfits Not how it works. Johan is still the chairman. He can fire the new CEO at any time, and Sony has no control over that. It's just that Johan isn't a manager, he's a dev, and he's much better at being a dev than at being a manager.
@@MrWhateverfits so, you just post b***sh** while doing zero research, huh? The guy he's hired as CEO has zero ties to Sony.
@piercearora7681 well technically he is a dev manager/ultimate project lead. Still definitely a manager, but now focused specifically on game dev as opposed to bean-counting
"tougher enemies still go down pretty easily when you use the same one trick loadout you've always used that everyone else also uses"
Lmao for real tho 💀 Those people are delusional. They say git gud, but being good with a variety of weaponry and strategies is part of getting gud. And when its always 2-3 loadouts that are viable, since the enemy design makes it so either your stuff does damage or none at all, there's no stratgey here, simple cooldown management and same boring strategy every single encounter.
It also implies that the game is hard and has depth which it doesn't. Its all articial difficulty, otherwise you wouldnt have a 24 reinforcements pool (counting starting respawns). I say reduce the amount of lives so it has tension and balance enemies so they dont one shot you at the most minor inconvenience. Give. Players. Agency.
Slide doesn't have any purpose, diving is so slow and ragdolls you on a pebble its rarely worth it and running 24/7 isnt a skill in itself.
Recoil management isnt really a deep skill here since its not predictible spray patterns.
yeah reading that comment made me facepalm so hard. even more so because they specifically said "when you know THE STRAT" aka: there is only one way to play that is viable.
100% when i read that the exact build flashed in my imagination, its probly autocannon vs automatons with scorcher or dominator heavy armor stun nades and grenade pistol with eagle airstrike stratagem and something extra on top
I bring whatever load out I feel like in the moment and enjoy success- you may be playing the wrong game
@@alexandreparent5754what’s “viable”?
I don’t understand this sentiment. There’s much more viable loadouts and strategems than people give em credit for.
There’s 100% some gear and stratagems that have absolutely 0 use or completely underperform when compared to similar items but there’s much more than 3 loadouts especially when put up against bots who I find to be the most fun simply because of the huge range of viable loadouts you can use against them.
The MG alone can practically take out nearly every bot unit in the game with relative ease, and last I checked a HMG mag dump can take out a factory strider. The punisher can one shot devastators and honestly out-performs the dominator in regards to taking out everything below hulks, same can be said for most, if not all AR’s too lmao.
The bugs on the other hand do force you to run certain loadouts simply because chargers and bile titans exist and Ironically enough force you to run more heavy armor penetration focused loadouts than you would against bots.
I get the criticisms, and agree with em for the most par but i disagree with the notion that you have to run X to play/enjoy the game.
Mad respect to Pilestedt. Man demoted himself to save the game from community managers and Alexus. He was always the one going out into the line of fire even when he was CEO too. You don't see accountability like that these days.
Yeah I seriously like the guy. I wanna buy him a beer on a hot summer day.
my simple reply to people saying TTK isnt the issue is "go kill a bile titan with the laser cannon"
see ya in half an hour bucko
Or literally any weapon that isn't EAT or Quasar. Even the spear (if it locks on) can take upwards of 3 hits if you don't get lucky with strike location. The anti-armor weapons should be more effective against things like bile titans, but the other weapons shouldn't be completely useless. Even the GOAT that is the autocannon really struggles with bile titans.
also they mentioned people can still solo helldive like bruh most of the time you are running away and stealthing which I guess is expected since you are playing solo after all, but is not like we are showing THAT much skill when you are just despawning the enemy to make the objectives easier. No offense to people that like that strategy btw, is just like it feels the only viable strategy which can get boring and it really does feels like the most if not the only viable strategy. And not to mentioned about variety of weapons and stratagems to clear it out effectively, but I that's more of a bugs planets issue actually.
Now I am not saying there is people who can clear solo helldive with a shit loadout add don't run away and actually engage in all fights like a God gamer, but that doesn't mean we should balanced it out around it like "yeah this guy which represent 0.01% of the players base can do it easily which means the enemies are too weak and those weapons too good!"
Doesn't laser cannon completely remove the abdomen and the thing still doesn't die? Once the abdomen is gone, the dumb bile titan should bleed out like charger does.
lmao @ bucko
This. At very least you should be able to further damage it, shredded abdomen having heavy armor doesn't make any sense. It actually even unprofitable to shoot ut since it rids titan of his slow and telegraphed spew attack and urges it to constantly ran towards you and trying to stomp which is much nore dangerous.
I'm glad that he's doing it, but it _is_ a bit morbidly funny how a week of talking with the team about balance apparently made him conclude that "Holy shit, I can *not* let these people out of my sight".
I'm willing to bet he's known this for a bit but didn't have the time to address it while running the company (especially with sony trying to implode itself). So he decided to keep the company running while he found a solution. Now here we are.
Good point. He looked at that balance team and thought things need to change drastically or we'll be going like a fast sinking ship.
Bro straight up went: *"FINE. I'LL DO IT MYSELF"*
Stepping sideways so he can keep an eye on the Hello Neighbors 2 troll.
He might as well become the main cm at this point as hes basically been the only communicator that we like aside from Twinbeard.
Just have twinbeards twin to do it.
I think his passion is on the game design aspect, though.
So it's sad when he isn't communicating at the moment, but boy is he a breath of fresh air.
"I don't like Alexus". Thank you for being frank. Honestly, I do not think CEOs can be friends with their employees, it is just too much conflict of interest when you think about it. Like, it's okay if Pilest is his manager, they can have a great time occasionally. But, just solely based on his Twitter feeds, it seems that he is *not very happy* with the changes that Alexus (or whoever under him) made those balancing changes - pea shooting weapons, high TTK, these are all direct artifacts of their "balancing" philosophy.
Pilest should take over the ship immediately before they lose more active players.
Looking at the current player counts and the progress of the current major order, I think they've already bleed out a huge number of players. If not in pure numbers, then in how much time players are spending with Helldivers. I know I've bleed out. I'm just sitting on the sidelines until the game stops crashing constantly and goes back to being fun. If Alexus ends up not having any influence on future design, and Pilestedt takes over, I've got some hope.
We can calculate a rough number of player drop over the last month. With the 4x kill count bug, the kill 2 billion bugs order took under 24 hours. That's ~500k kills a day, once you account for the glitched count. At that pace, the April playerbase would have killed 3.5 billion bugs in a week. Now, we're not even going to finish 3.14 billion kills when combining bots and bugs. Last week, the Kill 2 billion bots major order got 1.5 billion kills in a week. If you added last months' bug kill counts to that number, we should have been done in the middle of the week. If you subtract the bot kills from the total, you get ~235k bug kills per day if we complete the order. That's around a 50% reduction in the number of bugs killed, within just one month. And considering most players prefer bugs, ad you can rack up a lot more kills on bug planets, it's probably a lot higher than a 50% reduction in playtime. They're bleeding players.
Fortunately, lots of the sentiment is that players will come back if glitches are fixed and weapons are buffed back into "fun" territory. I'm in that camp too, so we'll see what effect the CEO change has on the game over the next month.
@alexlowe2054 perhaps "number of bugs killed" is a good metric to represent player activity and time logged. So yes, we are down roughly 50% since the bug major order, which means any major order with exterminate number of enemies will continue to suffer. This won't be the case for liberation campaigns, as impact multiplier scales up the lower the player count.
I do not think it is as easy as "fix the glitches and balance" and then the game will be as popular as it used to be. It won't. People are already jumping ship because other games have shinier new content updates, and another Exosuit, Warbond or Anti-Tank Mines just won't cut it.
I think the only way they recoup the player losses is to announce something big like a new faction (Illuminate, if you will), and have it as a (cheap) DLC, and have major order progress towards revealing the new faction. At the current pace, I do not think this is going to happen soon (maybe in 6 months or longer). So Arrowhead will continue to suffer more player losses. I'd say we will capitulate to around 10,000 daily peak concurrent players, and most players will simply stop getting new Warbonds (ouch).
I'm still playing the game everyday, albeit I have to try very hard to find new loadouts to make it more fun. (Bots aren't making it easy). It has been 3 weeks and the only new content coming up is the Exosuit (sad).
@@GooiYingChyithe third faction needs to be free or it separates the community for good and kills the game. However, they will release alongside them some monetary items and we can buy those. (Happily in my case if they keep the reasonable prices)
Im really warming up to the ceo (cco now). Even if a ceo was saying the same things he does, theres usually not much that actually changes. But actually stepping down to work with the team is a good move.
He's always been a Chad. Some of the other people just need to fucking go. I would love for Pilestedt to strap EvilBosse and Alexus into a chair and see how bad they are at the game.
That is not just unheard of in todays gAmInG iNDustRy, this is an example of true leadership!
"Company ain't working right, customers are unhappy. Can't see what's going on from up here - gonna go down and fix it myself."
Kudos to this man!
Also perhaps having the emotional intelligence and maturity to understand that his talents lie in development and not business. Most people wouldn't handle a hit to their ego like that, but this guy is so confident in himself he doesn't need those letters next to his name to know his value.
That is extremely respectable, and I’m very glad he could make this decision to save the game, and the galaxy. For democracy!
Of all the support weapons, I think the railgun baffles me the most. One shots hulks but takes 9 to kill a gunship and 20 to kill a factory strider. It just doesn't make any sense.
I think it's partially because the railgun effectiveness is tied to armor penetration more than raw damage, and the way armor is sectionalized in this game makes it very unreliable. One hit in the right spot will do massive damage, but another in a very similar spot with 1 more tier of armor and suddenly it does very little. They need to normalize the amor pen on it instead of tying it to a charge state I think.
Because of weak point damage or whatever it’s called. The gun ships and factory striders weakpoints do not function the same way as a hulk. They’re more vulnerable to explosive damage rather than heavy armor penetration.
It’s stupid though. But I’m excited to see potential buffs to it to make it more viable.
Rn I love running it as a precision based weapon exclusive for killing devestators, hulks, and chargers.
Then just using stratagems for striders and gunships.
@@RiceCubeTech I'd just like it to be more of an all-around weapon I guess. The darn autocannon and AMR aren't bad against any automaton, whereas the railgun is useless against some of the most important enemies you encounter. Its like they forgot about the railgun when they coded the gunships and the factory striders.
@@kevinfromsales6842 true true. I agree with that
It needs to be buffed so it can kill tanks, turrets, and bile titans frontally in a reasonable amount of shots (Not fucking 10-20) or it needs to have its damage buffed regardless and moved to primary weapon pool Replace it with a shoulder fired "Heavy Railgun" that comes with a backpack that holds its ammo and its battery, give it a medium scope, and make it a faster firing Quasar and call it a day, It fires faster than the quasar, has zoom, and has the same damage but takes away your backpack which most people who play would agree is a fair trade considering what support backpacks alone can provide.
I appreciate you holding the torch for the Orbital Guns. The balance between Orbital Guns vs Eagle Strikes is crazy.
You would think the balance between the two would be something along the lines of Orbitals with faster cooldowns and Eagles with more "I need more firepower now and quicker" but with longer overall cooldowns. But that's not really the case.
Get those Orbitals buffed for us Dough.
Dude really promoted himself back down to 'cadet.' Respect o7.
CCO is still a really high position. Hardly Casey lol.
'Space Cadet' is where it's at. Most of my usuals +50 are that moniker ;)
I am pretty sure he's CCO since he's still founder/owner of the company still. He just basically had trusted person handle buisness side of things.
Which means the business side of things can be ugly... imagine dealing with Sony day and night, and I imagine some of that was getting him burned out.
Destroy all AA-turrets to disable the -1 stratagem modifier! That would also work. 👍
There could be a way that you have 3 stratagems but they all have lower cooldowns.
Its gonna be 22% on 3 stratagems, support weapons and backback doesnt count and instead gives its lower cooldown bonus to the other stratagems.
AMR + Shieldbackpack = 44% which will he transfered to the last stratagem lets say Airstrike that already has 22%
Airstrike now has 66% lower cooldown on refills.
This method could open different builds and be fun since some people love spamming lets say an 500kg, that modifier would make using it more often possible
Take the minigun from the sentry and GIVE IT TO ME.
I never ever saw any CEO being so in touch with reality like Pilestedt! I hope this change brings back Helldivers 2 momentum. Because after Polar Warbond, it is going down the toilet regarding player count.
Sonny’s comment is stupid. “Solo’d by some”, yeah that’s cool. Not everyone can solo everything, so I agree that it’s a muppet comment.
I would be down for longer, more complicated/interesting missions. That would be fun and would kind of force a team to split up more (have a game plan) at times to get the job done.
Indeed.
It's also the only really viable/"resource-efficient" way to create interesting difficulty without significantly reworking the game (since the game can only handle so many enemies at once, and making their pathfinding complicated enough that players couldn't just kite them forever would have an exponential performance impact, and would probably also completely mess up the game flow).
Tbh the slugger nerf was the biggest slap in the face. It had a unique identity as the medium pen stagger machine that struggled with crowds. You could bring it in level 9 bugs since it had unique utility with bile spewers and stalkers, but you’d risk getting wrecked by stalker packs and that felt really good. Now it doesn’t stagger stuff and still struggles with crowds. Perfect example of devs not actually playing the game.
Also, dominator and slugger can 100% coexist as one trades semi auto burst dps for handling and a lower burst potential.
Slugger nerf and Railgun nerf were the two biggest slaps we've gotten so far. Both for almost the same reason too. Funny thing is the slugger nerf reasoning was retarded and made based on someone's opinion who apparently is completely unaware or negligent to what the purpose and capabilities of shotguns are when you use slugs in them instead of shot shells.
It was nerfed because it was apparently bad that a shotgun loaded with slugs (meant to extend the range of shotguns far beyond typical shot shells as well as punch harder) was better/on-par with current DMRs in the game, all while it has a very low zoom red dot scope.
1) that reasoning is retarded. You're nerfing the slug shotgun for slugs doing what theyre designed to do. Not to mention visibly the shotgun has an extended barrel to further increase its range.
2) If you are skilled enough to be fighting on par with rifles with actual zoom at long range, be hitting those shots effectively, and be doing it to boot with a slightly zoomed in red dot sight; you deserve that kill and that performance.
I hope by "stepping down" he means "stepping into the ring to beat some sense into the balance team and show them how it's done."
.. Or, y'know, something like that...
"When folks who don't know the game, who aren't good at the game, are trying to tell folks how the game should function and what the game is." This statement sums up the downfall of so many games I've played in the past. I'll have a 1000+ hours in a game and have actual, very thoroughly tested feedback and critiques to give the developers, yet the people who barely play the game seem to be the only ones who the devs will ever listen to.
Spawns put me from solo 5-6 to barley getting through 3-4... and never with samples, just getting by. That's the most adverse experience for me at my level. Exhausting spawns... you can never clear an area. Never
Tried loading the SEAF. Every time I cleared a spawn right on top of me, I go get another load/rocket (sorry, correct name eludes me atm) and there is a whole spawn on top of me again... clear it. Turn around, another one.
Run away to kite, come back.. it's completely clear until I pick up another rocket... spawn right on top of me. Please note that I have not even touched the terminal at all.
Level 4 constant chargers, sometimes 3 at a time..
They walk right through 500k, gas, and other strats... Eagle Strike and Oribital Shrapnel one somehow blows you up now... no matter how far away you run, it still blows you up....
Was having a stressful day today and was thinking about zoning out and playing a game. HD2 would make my day even worse, so not playing it at all. Used to be on every day. I played maybe 3 hours the past 2 weeks.
297 hours, level 63. Started early April.
Pilestedt carrying the studio on his back right out of the get go
I feel like the idea of "rely on your teammates to deal with the enemies that you can't" isn't necessarily a bad idea, but the problem is that the way they were going about it was wrong. In the current state, it's something that encompasses the entire game, instead it should be a TYPE of mission with certain modifiers (types/variants of enemies/objectives) that make team building and composition more important. That way you could still have these difficult missions that require a lot more teamwork and communication, while still having the "normal" missions that could be considered more casual and focused on fun over being super challenging.
This comment deserves more likes because this is exactly what i was thinking when ohdough was talking about it
For example the idea of team reload is great but the fact that other player need to carry your backpack is ridiculous. There is no way some random I just joined would trade his personal shield for a autocannon ammo backpack. I tried it only with a friend and when he died I was literally helpless.
Well, part of it too is how you make that cooperation work. One big example is the the team-reload mechanic, which is a cool idea but utterly fails in practice with how they implemented it and so no one gives af about it. You don't want to gimp yourself and drag the team down and be so reliant on your teammate. No one likes that.
If they made it so they can take the rounds from your backpack while its on you, that'd be a huge positive change.
@@drooskie9525 Lol, we share the same braincell :D
yeah like having a modifier that spawns lots more chargers and bile titans, so you know to bring stuff that works against that instead of it basically just being the default for helldive difficulty. They could also have one that spawns way more little bugs, I think having double hunters would be far scarier than double chargers. Modders have been doing insane enemy scaling in DRG for years now and it's very popular to push the limit of how many bugs you can spawn.
We should also count the Eruptor as part of the "nerfed into oblivion due to a bug, never buffed after the bug was fixed" category. The Eruptor was incredibly strong partially because of the bugged explosion that threw you, and more importantly, enemies, towards the explosion. That meant that even if your first shot didn't kill smaller enemies, they would be grouped up together, ready for a second shot to do more damage to them. Fixing the bugged explosion ragdoll meant that enemies are now flung *away* from the explosion as intended, but that means you can no longer use a follow up shot to kill multiple enemies. Now, if your first shot doesn't kill, you need to waste multiple shots killing the smaller enemies one-by-one.
That single bug fix alone would have been enough to drop the Eruptor down multiple tiers, since it completely destroyed the gun's ability to handle chaff, which is one of the main purposes for a primary. But then, on top of the bug fix, they nerfed the gun, not once, but twice in a matter of a few days. That's bull right there.
I haven't been playing Helldivers almost at all for the last ~2 weeks, because every time I've booted it up, I've experienced game breaking progression blocking bugs. I've had at least one per game, and the combination of that has prevented me from finishing a single campaign, even after restarting missions multiple times. Drop ships glitching into the terrain, game crashes, a SSD sub objective that wouldn't spawn, a bugged terminal that stayed black, 6 constantly spawning Bile titans on those defense maps making the mission effectively impossible, and more game crashes that kicked half my squad when we were barely holding the line. My friend said "I'll deal with unbalanced bile titan garbage, but I'm not dealing with game crashes on top of that." And when I do boot into a game, the negative stratagem modifiers aren't fun, and the guns are weak, devastators have gotten so much more accurate, and chargers now drift around and do whirlwind kicks after they charge. The only meaningful enemy nerf I've seen was the charger head armor nerf, while we've suffered through so many nerfs that every single one of my favorite guns are now completely useless against enough enemies that I can't bring any of the loadouts I like. Supposedly Bile Spewers got nerfed twice, but they still oneshot me, and they're still able to keep pace with light armor sprinting. Supposedly heavy armor now prevents headshots, but I've still seen clips of people getting one-shot in heavy anti-explosive armor. So much for those enemy nerfs and player buffs. They're useless. Empty words in patch notes that don't cover how much nastier the enemies have gotten.
Yet, in spite of all of that, I've still booted up the game a few times. I desperately want to love Helldivers. It was so much fun when I started playing, in spite of a few technical problems. I've been sitting on the sidelines until something big changed, and there were signs of visible improvement. This might just be the big change that's needed to get the game back on track. I'm not going to start playing yet, but I'll be back to test the waters with the first patch developed under Pilestedt. Hopefully he'll bring the game back to it's original glory.
Also i hope they think more of the rocket turret because i just seen it shoot 6 rockets at a bile titan face and still get scrapped instantly
yeah, it took me a while to notice that the rocket turret is shooing confetti lol, when i see enemies stagger here and there i thought it does something but nah
Making other weapons as good as JAR-5, Inc Breaker, Sickle or Scorcher won't make the game easier. It will make it more diverse. The devs seem not to understand you can only take one primary weapon. I want to have a hard time choosing one of 20+ great guns instead of just 4. The same goes with Stratagems, you can only take 3 or 4 so you have to choose carefully anyway.
Indeed. I like to point out the distinction between "hard" and "challenging". Hard can be hard for arbitrary and stupid reasons where you feel like you have no options to deal with the situation. Challenging means you're invited to overcome an obstacle through the various means available. Ideally the game is as challenging as possible at max difficulty with the widest possible variety of tools to solve problems with
The main problem with stratagems is the modifiers. The devs need to remove modifiers that don’t make the game more interesting to play. Adding modifiers that tweak enemy spawn in interesting ways (for example, roaming Stalkers or Shriekers) would be an actual fun challenge. Modifiers that nerf stratagems into the ground only force players to use meta, which makes the game more repetitive…
Yeah, the 4 stratagem limit really sets a high bar for "good" among stratagems. Almost every stratagem in the game is "good" for something, but a lot of them are so niche that they're hard to justify.
If you're playing at a high level, you really need certain abilities from your stratagems because the standard weapons simply do not provide them. Namely, that's "Kill bile titans" and "Deal with chargers efficiently" for bugs, and "Kill mobs of heavy devastators" and "Deal with Hulks/factory striders/turrets/tanks at a distance" for bots. That already eats up half of your slots - Add on any objective-specific stratagems and stuff which enables you to efficiently kill outposts, and you're out. When things are this choked, obviously people will pick stuff which has as many universal applications as possible - Like the 500kg, which can deal with any enemy in the game if you skillshot it, and can damage any base or side objective structure in the game as well.
The only way I can see the other stuff keeping up is if they get similar buffs to utility and consistency. I mean stuff like straight-up doubling the number of uses for finicky niche stratagems like Eagle rockets, or halving the cooldown on certain types of turrets, or straight up telling you the strike pattern for your next orbital barrage (since these are actually consistent, depending on throw angle and how many barrages you've used this mission).
Another fun idea would be allowing you to combine any two Support Weapon/backpack stratagems which only take up one slot in the Hellpod into one single call-in stratagem slot.
Or, I suppose they could approach this from the other end instead, and just give us 5 stratagem slots. And maybe get rid of the modifiers that nerf them.
I love this game, and generally speaking, i love AH as well. I think hearing that bro is focusing on fun factor issues and not arguing with Sony is one of the best pieces of news as a community weve heard.
Seeing him call out TTK as a working theory is just about the most succinct way the problem can be described.
pretty much, gives me so much hope because no one else has even mentioned ttk and that's the major issue with weapon balance right now
The tricky part is, the TTK is messed up in several distinct directions all at once. I think the most concise way to put it is that it's so insanely "volatile" that it's hard to even appraise, and it effectively distorts all the metrics you get out of the game until they're useless - Which makes "balancing based on spreadsheets" an even worse approach than it usually is.
With regards to weapons, as mentioned, some guns are just nowhere near as efficient at killing stuff than others. And not only that, certain weapons are just completely incapable of harming certain targets, giving them an effectively infinite TTK. A lot of the efficient strategies for killing certain enemies are also not intuitive at all, so you can't even trust that any given weapon is being used how you thought it would be. There are also unforeseen differences in how certain stats will affect certain players, like how controller players tend to utterly hate weapons which have slow handling, but mouse+keyboard players can compensate for it much easier by dropping out of ADS and turning with quick mouse sweeps.
With regards to _TTK against players_ , things are similarly messed up - Because headshots exist and enemy attacks are not consistent (especially against bots), it is impossible to meaningfully describe how deadly a certain enemy type actually is. Even the basic MG Raider can kill you instantly if they roll 3 headshots in a row, but they can also roll constant misses and do literally nothing. It's similar with Hunters, where they can instantly stunlock-headshot you to death, or just miss their leap constantly and do nothing if the server desync is just right.
If you would like, I have a few ideas on what you could for Helldivers content until the next patch/ war bond/ etc.
Analyzing Stratagems/ Loadout Combos
Firefighter
DPS (Gas + Flamethrower + Napalm) Incend. Shotty etc
Riot Gear (Ballistic Shield+ AMR/ HMG) Stun Grenades, Heavy Armor
Another would be having to spin a wheel to see which stratagems you’ll be taking into your missions, it’ll be a neat challenge or something to pass the time.
For something bit shorter but easy enough to do, an in-depth guide on how to survive on higher difficulties from “Unalive” Mission to Helldive. This could be solo or with a team. You’ve dove into that difficulty enough times to where I think you have plenty of tips to share with the cadets out there
Nerfing weapons was a terrible idea
*Sudden flashbacks to Destiny 1*
Yes, constant nerfs are a fucking terrible idea. I get power creep is a thing to compensate, but making everything crap isn't the way to go. Should make everything, at minimum, good/decent
@@Th3_Sp4Ce_M0nK3yPower creep is impossible when every weapon is garbage to begin with 😂 I swear the balance leader (Alexus) hates gamers and is deliberately trolling Helldivers 2 fans with his horrible balance updates.
I was just thinking yesterday that the modifier that only allows 3 strategems should also reduce cooldown for the ones you do bring. Really just different modifiers in general would be great. Instead of just “You will now have X% less fun” with every modifier available. But the CEO stepping into a new role is crazy, i got mad respect for him
So glad you immediately recognized what was going on, and made a video to get people’s minds straight about this.
Piles wants to get closer to creative/development decisions. I imagine he’s been watching from his CEO chair, extremely frustrated because he’s too busy dealing with corporate.
I will be casting my vote for Super Earth’s next president 🔥
New rule: everyone at the company needs to play one operation per week. And they get paid for it.
Yup, read: one OPERATION, not mission. So 3 missions on difficulty 4 or higher.
I mean, they CAN hire play testers for these kinds of purposes. But it would be much easier having devs do themselves. They can have access to all the cheat codes to speed up / skip certain unimportant mission elements and just focus on playtesting weapons / objectives.
On level 7 or above.
Level 9 gives you an hour early off work.
You've nailed several things on the head very eloquently. What's the point of having 30 weapons to use in a game when three or four are really the only ones that are meaningful and the balance team seems to be focused on nerfing the ones that people do like into the ground and slightly buffing the other ones but they're still not as good as the ones that were nerfed. It starts feeling too much like work. Not what I want to spend my free time on.
"some can solo" like yeah and some people can no hit all of soulsbourne does that make fromsoft games easy?
Bile titans might as well be impossible to kill without a 500kg or a rocket launcher glued to your loadout because it certainly feels that way already. 1-2 shots vs 20-30 shots is crazy when you also gotta juke chargers and dodge hunters
I would make the top ebow on the bile titan legs into a major weak point.
Since they are so thin and move a lot it would be a fun challenge to crack a leg with a well placed burst of medium armor pen.
After that play around with, "does it take one or 2 broken legs to actually kill them"?
Having a way to slow the titans would be sweet.
All it takes are 2 hits from EAT-17 or 110mm rockets.
EATs are underrated.
Next up: Pilestedt calls dough, takibo, and spiked on Zoom to ask for balancing input
I'm not playing at the highest difficulty solo or in groups and I still have most of the warbond kit and ship upgrades to unlock... but I have had zero interest in playing the game in weeks going on months. Duo Helldiving was a lot of fun for me, but with the way the game has been "balanced" it's just frustrating instead of challenging and I'm not interested in being frustrated.
There is now a glimmer of hope for the game. The March 6th patch started a downwards trend in the player base that wasn’t hard to see coming. It was a whole different game before that patch.
its crazy how some comments online are saying that buffing the weapons and TTK would make the game way too easy and boring.
if that is the case than they need to buff the enemies or increase quantities of the enemies.
the problem is that this game sells the fantasy of being a super soldier going against a hoard of enemies.
you need to feel like you are facing a hoard and that you die because you got overrun because you ran out of ammo or went to bite more than you can chew.
instead we feel like people that got scammed in a position and need to achieve the impossible in a rigged war that you were never meant to win.
its crazy how each new gun or stratagem released is weaker than the older models. hence you feel scammed, no support and do not feel like a super soldier in a galactic war, you end up feeling more like a random tom that got dragged out of bed with a random item and you got to do the impossible or quit.
Helldivers aren’t super soldiers, but they are special forces for the SEAF military. I agree with your point that Helldivers should be treated with more respect than a random army soldier lol
@@crackededge9351 you are right, but i meant that they sell you the idea that you are an elite peace keeping force. since its a galaxy setting i add the mental *Super* since i envision a super elite force.
but i am not even feeling the elite to the point that i cant fantasies about the super elite.
I'll continue to argue that the AA Defenses (-1 stratagem slot) modifier should just mean the AA Emplacements are scattered throughout the maps. Those annihilator towers? AA Defenses. Increase the chance for the AA emplacement side objective, and make it a guaranteed side objective on every map that has side objectives.
Interesting idea, could be a cool mechanic that you can select 4 stratagems at the start but only have access to 3 during the mission until you destroy the AA emplacements.
@@sb17899 that in essence would work, but doesn't make sense if you do an orbital only build. That's why I mentioned just peppering the battle space with AA emplacement turrets. Sure, bring 4 strategies, but if it's all eagles you're going to have a very limited AO with them.
Hard limiting to 3 without removing the emplacement only logically makes sense if you are bringing exactly one eagle
@@KrimsonStorm having one locked slot until a side objective is complete works if it there is a side objective that is an orbital cannon of some kind. That way the Super Destroyer itself is under threat.
@@adambielen8996 sure, but in that case it's not limited to eagles, and therefore having the strategem called "AA Defenses" doesn't really make sense. Anti orbital cannon makes more sense.
However, I think a bigger problem still exists. I still feel the massive impact on moral of just going anywhere that has that modifier. My friends and I either go down in difficulty or to a different planet if that's all that's offered on a planet. It makes it less fun. Gating it behind an objective minimizes the frustration but it doesn't make it more fun. Honestly the strategem scrambler was a more fun modifier than -1 strat.
By god, I swear, Helldivers 1 had perfect balancing...
Did it or is it sarcasm?
It did. That's why I am baffled devs struggle with balancing when all they had to do is convert it all into 3rd person.
@@DarthTellor so there's still hope for this game \o/
Patience is a virtue, so let's wait for the changes to come.
That's kinda bs, professional development teams have rollback plans and strategies in place so that changes can be quickly reverted. They could have reverted and taken all the time "to cook" that they're still taking.
Patience may be a virtue, but so is planning and execution on the part of the party being patiently waited upon.
That -1 strategem that is put into play during loadout always boggles my mind as to why that is there. Kills the fun factor.
I think one thing they have to fix ASAP is that bile titan's forehead is the biggest weakspot. It is absolutely ridiculous that hitting it in the forehead does more damage than hitting it in it's open mouth while it's spewing.
9:17 wtfff you just matrixed a cannon turret shot without even looking at it
I'd like modifiers to have a counter-measure in the mission. Like a side-mission that straight up removes the -1 modifiers or gives you a free stratagems for each person.
And you could do that with every modifier. Ion storm? A side mission for SEAF artillery that works on Ion storms. Orbital fluctuation, a side-mission that removes the modifier
That comment at 5:30 reads like this
"Customer states car speaker makes noise."
I remember i saw a video of some playing with the ceo and another dev. They played on a planet with the scrambler mod on it and had a rough time. One week later that shit was GONE i think we're in good hands.
Wanted to do a helldive with something different.. noticed if i dont go with a 500KG it feels like ass.. and apparently now spitting bile titans are immune to headshots which makes AT stuff even worse and me relying more on 500kg again >,>
Agree with you so much. The only way the -1 stratagem makes sense, is if you are given one to use or buff others. Just afraid I would get napalm on a bot planet. haha.
I feel like Alexus Kravchenko is the family of one of the shareholders so the ceo is having to sidestep his own position to have the power to tell this to stop
It's like in F1: some people are pay drivers like Nicholas Latifi was because his rich daddy has influence. Eventually he was so bad that he was removed from the seat still. At some point, you have to make the move, shareholders or not, having connections or not. This guy just isn't fit for the job, he shouldn't have become a developer. I would maybe not even pay him to mow the lawn, he would probably destroy all the flowers. "I mowed the lawn boss, I literally removed everything that was green or a plant boss."
2:00 There's another game I used to follow where early on in its life cycle around 60% of the developers played the game actively. Now that the studio is like 200 employees instead of 40ish when they started, it's closer to 20%. The game's balancing over all is still good, but there were *YEARS* where it was a lot less fun to play because of bad direction.
Having the developers *play the actual game* as part of their job should hopefully help. Should help stop situations where we have guns that are on paper amazing DPS. But suffer from light pen, bad ergonomics, slow reload time, no stun power, terrible recoil control, bad ammo economy. "Yeah but it shreds through a hulk's heat sink in .5 seconds."
Yeah, honestly, a weapon's "feel" is everything, especially in a game like this. Even terrible handling is acceptable if it can be overcome/planned for with skill, and the weapon delivers the kind of effect on target that makes it feel warranted - Like with the Dominator, or the pre-nerf Eruptor.
I think the difference something like this can make is best exemplified by the Recoilless Rifle reload cancel: The power level change was minimal, since you only save ~a second, but the interactivity of learning the right time to animation cancel made the annoying reload interactive, learnable, and satisfying, and now way more people use the RR.
I'm pretty sure the same would go for the Airburst Rocket Launcher if it had a similar system, where the reload counted as finished as soon as the rocket locks in place with a "click" (And maybe there should be a stage in the middle, so you don't have to re-insert the rocket if it was mostly in before you were interrupted).
@@BackwardsPancake A weapon's feel is everything in games like this. Eruptor pre nerf had *every* downside you could possibly think of. And yet it felt so good to use because it it did a specific job really well. it was my favorite primary, by far. I still use it a lot because I'm stubborn, but man it feels like trash now. I used to be able to run AMR and eruptor, AMR for priority targets, and Eruptor for crowds. But now when I use that, it feels awful and unfun. I'm constantly asking my partner for help when I get charged by a horde of chainsaws.
@@Deadsnake989 totally agree, I thought the release Eruptor was a perfectly balanced weapon. On paper it should have not been fun to use with long reload and awkward ergonomics, but in practice it felt like a weapon that you were rewarded for being patient with and utilizing at the right time. Now you still have to do all the work but you don't get the payoff. The same was true of the quasar. It didn't need a longer recharge, if anything it just needed a placeholder back pack so your loadout wasn't so well rounded with it on.
@@PRC533 Honestly I think the quasar was fine w/o a nerf. I barely ever used the weapon myself because the charge up time and cooldown time felt bad to use for me. I used the Recoiless Rifle or EAT's as my anti armor weapon over the Quasar. The Quasar was a good weapon, with good qualities. But it didn't click with me and how I like to play. So this is a good example of how a weapon feels is important. The Quasar was considered a good weapon by the community, and I personally didn't like using it.
@@Deadsnake989The Quasar has always been mediocre against bots. Even before its nerf, the AMR, Autocannon, and Recoiless Rifle were significantly better options. The only reason the Quasar got used more is because most of the playerbase is scared to fight Automatons without a shield backpack. Even the Laser Canon is better than the Quasar now, its main weakness is that it feels weird to aim. It destroys bot weak points very quickly after its recent buff, and is the best anti-Gunship weapon in the game.
what i'm reading and interpreting this is that he will now have direct power to rein in the department and control the Hello Neighbor guy
Happy you talked about the arc thrower nerfs etc. I love running the arc thrower and thought it was extremely fun to use before the major nerfs to it. I hope they do something about it in the next major update, I love the weapon and idea behind it. It just seems at the moment it’s not even worth bringing due to the quasar and ETA doing so much damage to high armor units. Preciate you dough!
Somehow this has all the energy of “Tonight, Pilestedt joins the Hunt…”
One of my biggest gripes in this game are the landmines. it takes dozens and dozens of minds to take down a single charger, yet one rocket to the most heavily armored part of a charger can take it down.
The biggest thing this game had going for it is that it makes you feel like the main character in an epic sci-fi action movie all the time. It's hard to feel like that when your guns become more and more useless and you instead start to feel like the MC of a sitcom or B movie. I think pilestedt stands a really good chance of turning things around and I'm excited for it. Also "muppet comment" is spot on for that X comment that guy is brainless. Also also "know the strat" means AC and scorcher/dominator only for bots past 7 UNLESS you have a full squad which is the reason I haven't been playing. I love my AC but I hate being forced to use it every bot mission
Actually, the gatling sentry cooldown starts once it lands and it'll be up for roughly 30s unless it gets destroyed, so you're looking more at 2min cooldown after upgrades. Now is it S Tier? No, but it's solid B tier damage wise and A tier aggro wise and more than capable of soloing patrols absent heavies, which is the primary reason I use it over the autocannon on bug maps as it doesn't need babysitting allowing me to throw it down and keep moving on. Honestly the biggest problem people seem to have with turrets is placement, all too often they throw them into hordes like they're air strikes or barrages then complain when they die in seconds, instead they should be thrown where they have both clear lines of fire and range, after all they have a targeting range of 70m, use it.
Railgun nerf was mostly reverted, stagger was not.
My thought on the railgun, give it a 4-5 round mag, give it really high ap, and enough damage to kill big things somewhat fast. Just make it the ap version of the cannon.
Wonderful news!
But please make the twitter screenshot a little bigger because it’s hard to read on a phone.
Thanks for your content, ohDough.
Autocannon sentry is 3-4 volleys depending on headshots on titans. Can kill 2 titans by itself.
I think it would be cool if they made it so the mini gun sentury had 2 charges and you could place multiple, and the standard sentury had like 3 or 4
Fantastic truths! One concept I've jumped on with is: "suboptimal TTK"
The games ttk with ideal weapons and ideal situations is usually fine, but the time becomes atrocious with anything less than the perfect tool for the job.
Is why I like bots, anything can kill a devastator, some things are certainly better, but lots of primaries are viable.
I feel you 🎉. I just got on long enough to get my medals, until the fix it.🎉🎉
It's been weeks since I last played. Every time I look at the HD2 icon on my desktop I stop myself from opening it, remembering that I'm just going to get steamrolled by bugs or bots with little to nothing I can do against it. I really wish they just leaned into the power fantasy for the sake of gameplay > "narrative"
i hope this move turns out well in the end.
He said "If you want a job well done ..." and stepped into the hellpod.
Dont confuse CEO stepping down with being forced to step down due to his recent failures. Conpanies often employ damage control techniques that can easily be confused with deception. "Unintentionally omitted from the patch notes"
3:20 me getting flashback of my 3 quasar teammates ignoring gunships.
Could you check out the laser cannon and test if it'd recoil has been changed and/or changed in mechanism altogether? I played with it all day yesterday and was hitting things fine with a stable linear recoil in one direction. Playing today it jitters everywhere and almost seems to increase/decrease recoil depending on the angle of the surface you are beaming.
You hit the nail on the head! I am having to TRY TO HAVE FUN!? Alexus is killing the game
4:00 exactly! I hate how bile titans require you to dedicated multiple strategem slots just to deal with their spawn rate in helldive difficulty.
Oh boy, really missed your videos on Helldivers lately. Knew you'd come up with something related to the CEO -> CCO change.
I just can't find anything I want to do in the game currently so the best thing I can do is not play it.
excellent points, thanks for the update.
They need to add more enemy types and more things to need each stratagem for and just let you bring the whole arsenal.
Minigun sentry was good at least up to difficulty 7 against bugs before the patrols spiraled out of control. It could clear a whole objective garrison before it could call for backup with good placement, as well as any patrols that would happen by. And if things did go hot, it could clear most if not all of the wave if backed up by an autocannon to keep chargers off of it.
Bile Titans require some luck.
Haven't played the game for 1 month, but i still watch some videos from you here and there.
Turrets on bugs right now you send the turret far from the bugs so it doesnt get insta destroyed, then a bile titan or a charger shows up and destroy it before it can even do anything, and the machine/gattling gun turrets go out too fast, compared with the mortar. also it sucks when a charger just takes down your turret before it can do anything and you now just spend 3 min running around shooting your primary until you can summon it again.
Fair point. There should be new ship upgrade "shielded turrets" or something like that
I feel like adjusting Strat cooldowns based on difficulty level is a pretty common sense solution for stratagem balance
Perhaps he can reign in the SoB in charge of balance so we can have guns and stratagems that are fun to use on enemies that are fun to fight.
You know, like how we started.
This changes everything. I'm super excited to see where he takes the game. Cant wait to play again
You made one video playing another game and the HD2 CEO already resigned.
Well while I do like having challenges it’s very clear that there are certain loadouts that are more effective than others.
Got on this game tonight just to check the players and saw a total of 75k and it’s disappointing. I have played the hell out of this game and maxed everything, and honestly don’t know what to do on it anymore. And I feel like many people feel the same. The game is the definition of insanity almost at this point. Just do the same missions over and over again to unlock another garbage warbond. Not to mention our weapons suck and i’m stuck to using the same loadout to be effective lol. As soon as the railgun got nerfed after the first patch I had a bad feeling they were gonna bury their own game.
I've sometimes got stuck fighting heavy devastators for minutes. Unload a full Eruptor clip on each of them even though I swear I'm sitting for the face. Obviously missing some shots, but still. I feel like I can kill hulks much more easily, but it still just sucks spending so much time on just a few enemies.
idea that i would love to see: give bonus when using several stratagem of same "element"
build with lasers - for every electric weapon / stratagem you get 1 more bounce / faster charge
build with turrets - when there is more than 1 turret active, they connect with deadly beams or become dmg immune
build with fire - every stratagem increases burn duration and you dont take fire dmg
build with explosives - every stratagem increases explosion radius
stuff like that would be awesome and makes you consider stratagems you never use to fit in the "build"
on the topic: thats good news, excited for next updates :)
QBR stands for quarterly business report
I think these are great news but it's really sad that he can't entrust this to anyone else. He sounds like a CEO the studio deserves to have.
I really hope AH watches your videos. I don't always agree with everything or would want all the changes you want, but most of the balancing changes you want are so well stated and the reasoning behind them is on point
I heard him stepping down i was like omfg no. But seeing its for a more hands on approach thats huge. I wish more dev teams had this passion.
The problem I see with enemy increase is that it has to run as smooth as possible on console
And when I fight bots I get quite the fps dips when a I get 4-6 drop ships at diff 9
5:13 same here, lol
I dont wanna play the game if I dont receive any fun but frustration.
Making TTK shorter doesn't automatically make the game easier. Bile Titans are a perfect example. They honestly aren't that threatening. They are one of the easiest enemies to avoid damage from on the Bugs side. They take forever to kill with some weapons, which isn't fun. But it doesn't really make them "harder" it just makes them annoying to deal with if you don't have dedicated anti-tank or a stratagem to drop on them.
Well yeah, some enemies are straight up "loadout checking" you.
Gunships are the best example. You can destoy tanks with just grenades but it's hard to hit gunship with one. You either HAVE something with medium pen and good durability damage (autocannon, amr, Laser cannon, eat-17 expendable, recoiless rifle or quasar) or you will have PAIN.
How good is that? Questionable. I'm ok with that. Some people hate it, some love it.
I just think that even big enemies like Bile Titan should give you a fair chance to kill them using med-penetration weapons. Some weakspot to use and deal good damage to (if you are accurate enough).
Perfect example - Hulk. You can oneshot him in the eye with railgun on safe mode (as of today, 23th May)