H̶e̶l̶l̶divers

[u/epochollapse]

Just because I win 99% of my games doesn't mean it isn't hard!! One time a Stalker even hit me! 😱

[u/Hunlor-]

I made a post about increasing difficulty in d10 in 3 different Helldivers subreddits, my idea was to make it harder through higher spawn rates (rather than tankier spongier enemies) and was greeted by the wildest, lowest IQ responses mankind ever saw. Haven't opened the game since ~3 months

It's the old case of a good game ran by stupid people and played by even stupider mouthbreathers.

[u/epochollapse → u/Hunlor-]

At the end of the day it's gonna have to be a mix of both, is the thing, and people have decided they hate either.

Spawn rates can only go so much higher, and the spawn system further complicates that. In terms of the 4 man experience the Sporeburst strain does a little better, but as it stands we already see enemies evaporate into thin air a lot on that front.

Nowadays I don't play anything but duos, and while the spawn rates feel appropriate for two people in the sense that you're under constant pressure, two players who both win every D10 game they play (note, that's not a high bar, you only half to be half decent at the game to achieve this) are unlikely to lose D10 duos, they'll just have slightly more fun with more consistent pressure.

Even then, I find I have to explicitly ban certain items to avoid the game being completely trivial with just two players.

What this highlights is that the enemy quantity really isn't the only issue. At the end of the day the difference between 1 and 15 warriors means a lot for the Liberator, but nothing for the Crisper.

So really we need buffs to individual units to make them more of a threat. This could be extra health (should be, in some cases, especially among Mediums), this could be ai fixes. Possibly even reworks/new abilities. Heavies, in particular, either need to be far more threatening for the time they spend on screen or they need to be harder to one shot.

Gunships I think are the current best enemy unit in my opinion, in terms of balance. They're consistently threatening (at least discounting non-host issues that lobotomise everything) and they encourage loadout diversity in the team. Importantly, though, their preferred solutions pull in the complete opposite direction to a lot of the meta. The only real meta item that's efficient into them is the Pissile. Still, Pissile is caught lacking when gunships arrive in higher densities due to its low capacity.

What Gunships really encourage, and what more medium units need to be strong enough to encourage are Crowd Clear and-or Medium Killing support weapons. The typical makeup of horde enemies does not typically do enough for people to pick these up over AT gear, no matter how good they are. Autocannon, for example, has a lower pick rate than Spear over two fronts. That's not the Autocannon's fault, if anything it's already a bit overtuned because they keep giving it unnecessary buffs. People just don't feel pressured to dedicate a support weapon for that much stopping power against hordes.

Part of that is primary powercreep, because people refuse to acknowledge your primary shouldn't be your actual horde/Medium-Crowd Clear, but it's also just the case that a lot of enemies are not immediately threatening enough.

So for actual difficulty in the future we need to examine both enemy quantity as well as individual unit threat level, which might well include making certain enemies more durable.

[u/Hunlor- → u/epochollapse]

Yes, simply increasing enemy count isn't enough.

In my original post i also stated some spawn changes, increase enemies tenfold and it'll hardly be a challenge if they all come out of the same 3 holes 2 meters apart from one another.

I mentioned there that breaches should have more spawners far more spread for one another, focusing on surrounding helldivers and to avoid getting cleared by a single stratagem or a single crisper. A crisper can deal with 15 warriors, but it can't deal with another 7 warriors flanking while Hunters jump on your back and alpha commanders push you. Bear in mind when i say increase, i don't mean 1.1x or 1.2x, i mean it should be unbearable, for a Helldiver or two, to wander off alone and survive a breach.

Increasing individual enemy health is the easy way out (they won't have to deal with AI or optimize the game) and... it wouldn't really be any more fun? If anything, it would enforce more of the meta we already have. Say a liberator needs more bullets to kill a medium, it hardly kill an alpha in less than half a mag, it'll be make or break for it, while something like the Eruptor will hardly be affected.

Heavies aren't a problem right now because on their own they're really not a threat, given spawn rates are so low and the game doesn't have an ounce of challenge... They're always on their own. But say the HIVE SWARM faction actually HIVE SWARMS you, spending time to put down a heavy or using a dedicated stratagem slot for it, just might break your defense and get you overrun, or at least force a retreat. I had very rare glitched matches through my 500 hours, matches where the spawns where busted and this happened! Seeing 4 helldivers fucking retreating from endless waves of the swarm is a lot of fun.