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Helldivers 2 |OT| Another bug infested game

Poppyseed

Member
Sorry, no idea what the dualsense equivalent is but anytime that you're in your ship there should be a huge banner near the top of your screen saying what the prompt is. Progression in the game comes mainly from 3 things. Requisitions which are used to unlock stratagems. Samples which are used to give upgrades to your ship. And medals which are used to buy stuff in the warbonds (or what most people call battle passes). They are not battle passes, they're an actual progression system were you can pick what you want provided you've spent enough in the pages before. It's not unlike RPG progressions systems that gate higher tier stuff until you spend enough in the lower tiers. The last currency is super credits which might be called the premium currency but it's earnable via gameplay. You can use those to buy premium armors and unlock premium battle passes.

Also, it's weird that you have two personal orders. Well, since you're new maybe you still have the one where you have to use the Anti-Material Rifle that everyone started with near launch? No idea. The personal order for everyone today are devastators. They're a bot enemy. You can tell what an enemy is called by tagging them. Again, no idea what the command is for controllers but it's tapping Q on PC.
Thanks again for the reply. Both the personal orders are to kill some enemy type, actually. I'll stick at it for a bit, but so far it's not a great-looking game, and it's not grabbing me, - both of which together is a bit of a problem. But, not jumping ship yet.
 

Braag

Member
No more 5 chargers running around. Most I had was 3 at the same time today. But now there are spewers for days, makes the Stalwart and Machine Gun more viable at higher difficulties. I see a lot of people using the Arc Thrower but man is it easy to kill your team with that thing lol
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I think it is a hard thing to imitate HD2. It's not like it's a AA game, where other studios say to themselves "we could vastly improve upon this formula". Like a Warzone to PUBG situation. HD2 has some of the best combat mechanics, destruction, animations, and sound of any 3rd person shooter on the market. It would be an incredibly risky investment for any studio to green light a game that would compete with it

Even if a studio did greenlight such a game, it will be 5-7 years before it ever comes to fruition, like what Bungie is attempting to do with Marathon, replacing Tarkov

It's literally a AA game. Arrowhead launched H2 at around 100 employees and started production on H2 at ~10 employees.

It's also insanely buggy and a bit janky. I'd say their execution was pretty mid on a fantastic concept. I could easily see a bigger studio licking their chops believing they could make a superior version. Not sure it would take 7 years either considering how simple the premise is.
 
It's literally a AA game. Arrowhead launched H2 at around 100 employees and started production on H2 at ~10 employees.

It's also insanely buggy and a bit janky. I'd say their execution was pretty mid on a fantastic concept. I could easily see a bigger studio licking their chops believing they could make a superior version. Not sure it would take 7 years either considering how simple the premise is.

HD2 was never at 10 employees. Maybe for the first Helldivers. They were working on HD2 for 7 years. It surely started out small, but the actual full production part of development was 100. Not too far from what Sucker Punch had to make Ghost of Tsushima. The only reason people are referring to HD2 as AA is because it sold for 40$. But that is because it's a gaas game. I doubt any of Sony's gaas will be 70$.

The vast majority of the issues are server based. And the jank you talk about is nothing that couldn't and mostly likely will be ironed out within 6 months from now. The games engine is buttery smooth the vast majority of the time

But keep bitching about HD2, even tho you got more hours played than 99% of the people in here
 

gatti-man

Member
It's literally a AA game. Arrowhead launched H2 at around 100 employees and started production on H2 at ~10 employees.

It's also insanely buggy and a bit janky. I'd say their execution was pretty mid on a fantastic concept. I could easily see a bigger studio licking their chops believing they could make a superior version. Not sure it would take 7 years either considering how simple the premise is.
The jank is part of the fun. The wild ragdoll stuff that happens makes the game incredible.

I honestly can’t laugh harder and some of these takes. Game is insanely creative and fun in a way that never feels the same but it’s a mid execution with fully destructible everything. Yeah ok.

You know what you’re going to get from a bigger studio? F U pay me is what you’re going to get without any of the charm that H2 has.
 
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Is it just me or is this game... boring? I'm at Level 9 and I'm already tired of the gameplay loop, the palette swap armors, and the lengthy progression system. Does this game "open up" or is it just not for me? Feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over ad nauseam.
take a break buddy? you can play it once a week. Then again I can play games like Rainbow Six Siege and Rocket League nonstop even if its the “same“ thing again and again.
 

JaseMath

Member
take a break buddy? you can play it once a week. Then again I can play games like Rainbow Six Siege and Rocket League nonstop even if its the “same“ thing again and again.
Take a break? I've logged (maybe) 6 hours in as many days. If I were really enjoying myself, I think that'd be a much larger number.
 
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Take a break? I've logged (maybe) 6 hours in as many days. If I were really enjoying myself, I think that'd be a much larger number.
The game really picks up the more chaotic it gets. If you are still playing early difficulty levels, it can be pretty dull. Difficulty level 5+ is when the game finds its groove. It's probably not for you if you don't enjoy it after that point
 

bitbydeath

Gold Member
Is it just me or is this game... boring? I'm at Level 9 and I'm already tired of the gameplay loop, the palette swap armors, and the lengthy progression system. Does this game "open up" or is it just not for me? Feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over ad nauseam.
Not all armours (and other items) are palette swaps. They often come with different abilities and stats, check the info section on each item to get a detailed description of what they can offer.

Also, you’re almost at level 10 where you can unlock the Guard Dog backpack. The laser variant is worth grabbing.
 
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yurinka

Member
It's literally a AA game. Arrowhead launched H2 at around 100 employees and started production on H2 at ~10 employees.

It's also insanely buggy and a bit janky. I'd say their execution was pretty mid on a fantastic concept. I could easily see a bigger studio licking their chops believing they could make a superior version. Not sure it would take 7 years either considering how simple the premise is.
The game credits of Helldivers 2 has 1,235 people (1,220 developers, 15 thanks) and has been 8 years under development. It's a AAA game. The people of the lead dev studio is normally around 10% or less of the total amount of people who works in a game.
 

John Bilbo

Member
Is it just me or is this game... boring? I'm at Level 9 and I'm already tired of the gameplay loop, the palette swap armors, and the lengthy progression system. Does this game "open up" or is it just not for me? Feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over ad nauseam.
For me the game clicked about ten hours in. When you start playing level 6 to 7 difficulty the game starts to shine its brightest.
 

John Bilbo

Member
I think the armored bugs are vulnerable in the pits of their limbs. It takes some aiming, but using autocannon I think I could kill bile titans and chargers by shooting there.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
For me the game clicked about ten hours in. When you start playing level 6 to 7 difficulty the game starts to shine its brightest.
Depending on the skill level of the party you can hike the difficulty, but with 4 people playing well together you can employ effective strategy to allow some people to aim precisely, call for stratagems, take look at the map, etc… protecting each other plays a lot into it.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
The game credits of Helldivers 2 has 1,235 people (1,220 developers, 15 thanks) and has been 8 years under development. It's a AAA game. The people of the lead dev studio is normally around 10% or less of the total amount of people who works in a game.
I think the 1,235 number is inflated. It could credit people that did minimal work or that are part of teams like Sony publishing and QA that are thanked as a group.

Say we have direct and indirect costs of $300 per head per day (which is low, normally you would say £400 or so per head).

This would be about $8 Million or so per month.
 
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SCB3

Member
I can see it happen.
Similar to Demon's Souls.
Minor correction, Dark Souls was the tipping point for the Soulslike genre, Demons was still very obscure until DS was out and people wanted more

Also, it's weird that you have two personal orders.
If you skip a few weeks sometimes you get them piled up, I had 3 yesterday that I'd missed, hell I couldn't even scroll down to see the Devestators one until I'd completed 2 of them first
 
Is it just me or is this game... boring? I'm at Level 9 and I'm already tired of the gameplay loop, the palette swap armors, and the lengthy progression system. Does this game "open up" or is it just not for me? Feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over ad nauseam.
It's ok if it's not your kind of game. Play something else then.
 

yurinka

Member
I think the 1,235 number is inflated. It could credit people that did minimal work or that are part of teams like Sony publishing and QA that are thanked as a group.

Say we have direct and indirect costs of $300 per head per day (which is low, normally you would say £400 or so per head).

This would be about $8 Million or so per month.
It's the game credits, numbers aren't inflated. In most cases the real number is higher because normally in several outsourcing companies for areas like art or localization only bosses or producers are creadited, and not the lower level workers who do the work itself.

I doesn't mean that these 1200+ people worked on the game during 8 years or a huge portion of i, only a very small portion of them did (Arrowhead heads, designers, heads of department). Many of them (Sony some executitves, PR, voice over, motion capture, localization, concept artists, music, audio, CG artists...) work on it during maybe only some weeks or months, others only during maybe around a third of the project (coders and artists hired for the big push when there's the production peak, testers...).

I assume it had a budget of around $100-$150M, which would include base post launch content (to be expanded due to the success) and base server costs budget (that may already have spent because is being way more successful than expected) for the first year.

So its an AAAA game then
AAAA would be starting at around 3 times this amount of people. So games like Spider-Man 2, Halo Infinite, Starfield, Diablo IV, Far Cry 6, Skull & Bones and pretty likely Beyond Good & Evil 2 and GTA6.
 
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Topher

Gold Member
So I'm pretty new in this game. Still a cadet. Played a couple of missions last night and noticed I didn't have the option for the mech all of the sudden. Any reason for that?
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
The game credits of Helldivers 2 has 1,235 people (1,220 developers, 15 thanks) and has been 8 years under development. It's a AAA game. The people of the lead dev studio is normally around 10% or less of the total amount of people who works in a game.
oprah-winfrey-shrug.gif
 
So I'm pretty new in this game. Still a cadet. Played a couple of missions last night and noticed I didn't have the option for the mech all of the sudden. Any reason for that?

It was given as a free, bonus strategem for all players to test out for a couple of days, the devs have done this with multiple strats since release. You will now need to unlock it if you want permanent access, you need to be level 25 and it costs 20,000 requisition slips.
 

DelireMan7

Member
So I'm pretty new in this game. Still a cadet. Played a couple of missions last night and noticed I didn't have the option for the mech all of the sudden. Any reason for that?
It was a special modifier. It was available for each mission for everybody. The event is over.
They do some event like that from time to time.

Now you have to purchase it (but need to be Lvl 25 xD)
 

Topher

Gold Member
It was given as a free, bonus strategem for all players to test out for a couple of days, the devs have done this with multiple strats since release. You will now need to unlock it if you want permanent access, you need to be level 25 and it costs 20,000 requisition slips.

It was a special modifier. It was available for each mission for everybody. The event is over.
They do some event like that from time to time.

Now you have to purchase it (but need to be Lvl 25 xD)

Ah....thanks guys
 

John Bilbo

Member
I wouldn't mind it if this kicks off a new genre of this type, as long as other games make a good concept with enough differentiation.
Isn't this game a bit of both horde shooter and extraction shooter? A bit like Left 4 Dead combined with Tarkov or Hunt: Showdown.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
It's literally a AA game. Arrowhead launched H2 at around 100 employees and started production on H2 at ~10 employees.

It's also insanely buggy and a bit janky. I'd say their execution was pretty mid on a fantastic concept. I could easily see a bigger studio licking their chops believing they could make a superior version. Not sure it would take 7 years either considering how simple the premise is.

The issue is those bigger studios would try to over-produce the game and try to do too much. Sometimes AA studios make games like this better, by focusing on the right things. Core gameplay and fun!
 

Topher

Gold Member
I don't think so. Normally I hate these kinds of games. Helldivers does it just right. Something like this will be very difficult to copy .

Yep. I wouldn't have bothered with this game as I really don't like Gaas, service, whatever having tried several, but my son pestered me to get it and I'm actually having some fun. Seems to me that the devs focused on making a fun game first and foremost rather than methods of monetization. Think that has worked pretty well for them.
 
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DelireMan7

Member
Isn't this game a bit of both horde shooter and extraction shooter? A bit like Left 4 Dead combined with Tarkov or Hunt: Showdown.
I have played these games but I've seen both of them associated to Helldivers 2 on different discussions.

Basically :
  • Land on a planet
  • Do the main objective (and secondary if you want)
  • Reach and defend the extraction point.
You can be overwhelmed by enemies (bugs like in Starship Troopers, or robots shooting laser and rocket) easily.
You have different stratagems you can call during mission to help from support weapons/equipment (flamethrower, railgun, machine gun...), orbital artillery barrage, sentries, mine fields, nukes....
 

John Bilbo

Member
I have played these games but I've seen both of them associated to Helldivers 2 on different discussions.

Basically :
  • Land on a planet
  • Do the main objective (and secondary if you want)
  • Reach and defend the extraction point.
You can be overwhelmed by enemies (bugs like in Starship Troopers, or robots shooting laser and rocket) easily.
You have different stratagems you can call during mission to help from support weapons/equipment (flamethrower, railgun, machine gun...), orbital artillery barrage, sentries, mine fields, nukes....
I would add the resource collecting to the bullet points. The fact that you lose the resources if you die makes this game somewhat of a extraction shooter. Not much but a bit.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
The issue is those bigger studios would try to over-produce the game and try to do too much. Sometimes AA studios make games like this better, by focusing on the right things. Core gameplay and fun!
Yeah, I don't think Arrowhead landed on the perfect numbers here. Helldivers 2 is anything but a perfectly designed game. Its doing plenty wrong. Progression is done so poorly in H2 that another studio could fix it relatively easily and benefit immensely.
 

iHaunter

Member
The jank is part of the fun. The wild ragdoll stuff that happens makes the game incredible.

I honestly can’t laugh harder and some of these takes. Game is insanely creative and fun in a way that never feels the same but it’s a mid execution with fully destructible everything. Yeah ok.

You know what you’re going to get from a bigger studio? F U pay me is what you’re going to get without any of the charm that H2 has.
If you're looking for advice on games ignore men_in_boxes and slimy snake. They don't play video games.

I've seen a bunch of videos on HD2 and it looks super fun. Just got a 3060 can't wait to play it.
 
Is it just me or is this game... boring? I'm at Level 9 and I'm already tired of the gameplay loop, the palette swap armors, and the lengthy progression system. Does this game "open up" or is it just not for me? Feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over ad nauseam.
I think i'm with you on this, i'm level 14 and getting kinda board. I think you need to have a team to play with, playing with randoms is starting to be a drag. Playing with good friends though on challenging or above could be great I can see.
 
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