I got it, unfortunately. I recommend not getting it, and for reasons not even about what was linked in this post.
The developers have consistently shown that they don't know how to balance their own game. They continually nerf weapons in the dumbest ways possible, and not because they're too powerful, but because too many players are using them. They don't play their own game, and they've admitted they can't even beat it on the higher difficulties. They also don't test their changes before implementation, so the game is steadily accruing more and more bugs, some of which have been in the game since launch, and should be easy to fix.
They're obviously making changes based on metrics and spreadsheets, and not because they understand their own game. They've even buffed fire damage weapons (which resulted in buffing enemy fire damage, resulting in insane instant deaths to those enemies) multiple times, because not enough players were using them, while ignoring the fact that fire damage is bugged for players, where only the game's host DoT damage will work.
They've also repeatedly shown that they not only make changes to make the player's lives more difficult, but seem to revel in being sadists toward their own players. There's either a company wide policy, or a lot of developers in the company, who absolutely hate their own players. It's the only motivation that makes sense, given many of the changes they've made, and the game philosophy they're following.
The devs seem to think fun and challenge are antithetical, that the highest difficulties should be a miserable experience, and that meta loadouts are always bad (without knowing why the players are picking those options). In total, it's an incredibly toxic game philosophy.
With the game's current development trajectory, steer clear. There are way better co-op horde shooters (like Deep Rock Galactic).
They've even buffed fire damage weapons (which resulted in buffing enemy fire damage, resulting in insane instant deaths to those enemies) multiple times
They have this weird obsession with making the game physics "realistic", so instead of having one set of fire parameters for player weapons and another for enemies and another for environment, they have these universal parameters that all of those draw from. Like when people are complaining about the scope on the anti-material rifle being off of where the bullet actually hits, the devs explained that the problem actually has something to do with recoil and bullet drop, and affects all weapons but you only notice it on long range weapons. Now normal people would simply tweak the scope and call it a day but these devs want to instead muck with the basic physics of the game engine. Another example is the rockets in the mech. The mech would explode if you fired a rocket while turning because the mech would physically run into the rocket. So they changed how the mech fired rockets, including making it impossible to fire them downward now, rather than make the mechs impervious to their own rockets or give the rockets a minimum arming distance or whatnot.
Mind you, this is a 3rd person shooter, not a combat simulator like Arma.
Like when people are complaining about the scope on the anti-material rifle being off of where the bullet actually hits, the devs explained that the problem actually has something to do with recoil and bullet drop, and affects all weapons but you only notice it on long range weapons.
The anti-material rifle's scope has always been off, and the bullets are impacting up and to the left, regardless of distance.
I shoot guns as another hobby. I'm knowledgeable on the subject. If what the devs said is true (regarding their reasoning for all the scopes being off) then they're fucking morons. The devs claim to come from military backgrounds (I think it's mandatory in the country they're in). If so, they must've gotten the worst training possible.
Recoil doesn't affect bullet impact. If rapid successive shots are made (either in full auto or fast trigger pull semi auto) with the shooter not having proper aim, then the bullet impacts will be less accurate, but the recoil itself only affects a shooter after the trigger has been pulled and the bullet has left the barrel. A weapon like the anti-material rifle (in the game), which is semi auto, has always been hitting up and to the left, even on a perfectly lined up first shot.
Bullet drop also wouldn't explain the perpetually off scopes. Any non retarded shooter can make a shot group, see it's always hitting up and to the left, and just adjust their scope to compensate. In game, the weapons with misaligned scopes are predictably hitting the same spots, regardless of range.
The only things that should be affecting bullet impacts at average engagement distances seen in Helldiver 2 are wind (which isn't implemented in game, and would be negligible), gravity differences on various planets (which isn't implemented in the game), and improperly manufactured barrels heating up and causing bullet impacts to change as the barrel warps. For those unaware, some barrels will warp under temperature variance (mostly caused by poor manufacturing and quality control). As an example, I've gone to the range and shot one of my AR15s in winter, and as the barrel warmed up from successive fire, the point of impact changed 8-12 inches up and to the right, at 100 yards. But, like the other variables, this hasn't been implemented in the game.
If the devs did want to implement more accurate bullet physics, then the scopes should be zeroed at a specific distance, and the bullet will impact above or below that zero outside of that zero distance. If they did that, the devs would also need to implement much better scopes (most of the ones in game are laughably bad), so the player has notch marks to identify and range a target before shooting, and to account for bullet drop.
But, this discussion is merely academic, as the current map layouts and massive amounts of volumetric fog in game reduces all engagement distances to under 200 yards, and mostly under 100, so bullet physics would be a near useless addition.
They continually nerf weapons in the dumbest ways possible, and not because they're too powerful, but because too many players are using them.
The Dead By Daylight developers do the exact same time of bullshit with nerfing killers based purely off of "win rate". This led to Freddy Krueger, an already weak killer, getting nerfed purely because he was able to score cheap wins on clueless players.
The biggest, and first example, of the Arrowhead devs nerfing a weapon based on user metrics (rather than an understanding of their own game) was the railgun.
At the time (before being nerfed), it was the only effective method at killing the absurd amount of heavy enemies that the game throws at you on the higher difficulties. The game is designed such that heavily armored enemies can't even be damaged by most weapons (since they don't have enough penetration to make it through the armor), which forces the players to pick anti-armor weapons specifically to deal with those heavy enemies. At the time, the railgun was the only effective anti-armor gun the players had. Since the railgun nerf, AH has since buffed the other anti-armor weapons, nerfed heavy enemy spawn (on most missions), and nerfed some heavy enemies to make them easier to kill by those other anti-armor weapons. Since the nerf, almost no one uses the railgun anymore, because every aspect of the gun is better with the other anti-armor options. AH could completely revert the nerf and it wouldn't be considered OP by the standards of the current game.
I should also add that one of the reasons why AH nerfed the railgun was that there was a bug in the game back then where some players could 2 shot bile titans (the biggest heavy enemy threat at the time) with the railgun. And yet, instead of fixing the bug, they decided to nerf the weapon first. AH have also admitted to making gameplay changes based on what they see in Youtube videos from content creators.
The AH devs appear to be both malicious (toward their playerbase) and retarded at the same time. A potent combination of a warning to stay away.
I played Natural Selection 2 and the devs kept balancing around "50/50 win rate" between both sides (asymmetrical team, marines vs. aliens).
The game sucked ass because they didn't account for Marines being were way more fun to play as, with more cool toys, and Marines were much simpler and used standard FPS mechanics making them more newbie friendly. Some Aliens were powerful but it had a steep learning curve. It was also highly punishing to die as an Alien since you'd lose all your evolutions while Marines could just pick up their dropped shotgun again.
This meant every game the lobby would pile up with people trying to play as Marines and the only people who would play as the Aliens were the veterans.
Then they'd "balance" the game around one team of veterans vs one team of newbs for their faggy 50/50 win rate, thinking it was "balanced" l, and it just became shitty boring hell to be an alien while Marines were stomping around in mech suits having a blast.
I played natural selection 1 for thousands of hours. Only played natural selection 2 for like 100 hrs.
I had fun in natural selection 1 because of certain special scenarios that make it fun. I remember turtling for 2 hours as marines lol. Or being a gorge and hiding in a vent with healing chambers and spitting at marines trying to traverse to vent to get you lol.
Like I liked the 'power' idea, but it bewildered me that the whole map started "powered" and you could only get a place to have the lights out if the marines first built a power core and then aliens destroyed it. This made zero sense when it could've given the aliens a much-needed advantage in ambush and hive defense if the whole map started DARK until a power core was built in a room.
Aliens got almost nothing new, in fact they lost features (besides the unneeded alien commander). Rather than do something interesting and neat they just ported the alien gameplay over 1:1 and basically left it. Of the five lifeforms, you still only had one support class, one 'endgame' class so it doesn't even count, the starting class, the gorge, and the Fade. No new alien lifeform. No new way to evolve new abilities.
Like if the point is "evolution", wouldn't it have been interesting to give aliens upgrade trees they can spend evolution points on that would let them counter the tech the marines were researching? Like if the marines start getting flamethrowers and incendiary, aliens could evolve heat-resistant carapace or something?
Marines had all the fun and cool shit and aliens got a fucking commander.
Well, I was considering buying this, guess not.
I got it, unfortunately. I recommend not getting it, and for reasons not even about what was linked in this post.
The developers have consistently shown that they don't know how to balance their own game. They continually nerf weapons in the dumbest ways possible, and not because they're too powerful, but because too many players are using them. They don't play their own game, and they've admitted they can't even beat it on the higher difficulties. They also don't test their changes before implementation, so the game is steadily accruing more and more bugs, some of which have been in the game since launch, and should be easy to fix.
They're obviously making changes based on metrics and spreadsheets, and not because they understand their own game. They've even buffed fire damage weapons (which resulted in buffing enemy fire damage, resulting in insane instant deaths to those enemies) multiple times, because not enough players were using them, while ignoring the fact that fire damage is bugged for players, where only the game's host DoT damage will work.
They've also repeatedly shown that they not only make changes to make the player's lives more difficult, but seem to revel in being sadists toward their own players. There's either a company wide policy, or a lot of developers in the company, who absolutely hate their own players. It's the only motivation that makes sense, given many of the changes they've made, and the game philosophy they're following.
The devs seem to think fun and challenge are antithetical, that the highest difficulties should be a miserable experience, and that meta loadouts are always bad (without knowing why the players are picking those options). In total, it's an incredibly toxic game philosophy.
With the game's current development trajectory, steer clear. There are way better co-op horde shooters (like Deep Rock Galactic).
They have this weird obsession with making the game physics "realistic", so instead of having one set of fire parameters for player weapons and another for enemies and another for environment, they have these universal parameters that all of those draw from. Like when people are complaining about the scope on the anti-material rifle being off of where the bullet actually hits, the devs explained that the problem actually has something to do with recoil and bullet drop, and affects all weapons but you only notice it on long range weapons. Now normal people would simply tweak the scope and call it a day but these devs want to instead muck with the basic physics of the game engine. Another example is the rockets in the mech. The mech would explode if you fired a rocket while turning because the mech would physically run into the rocket. So they changed how the mech fired rockets, including making it impossible to fire them downward now, rather than make the mechs impervious to their own rockets or give the rockets a minimum arming distance or whatnot.
Mind you, this is a 3rd person shooter, not a combat simulator like Arma.
The anti-material rifle's scope has always been off, and the bullets are impacting up and to the left, regardless of distance.
I shoot guns as another hobby. I'm knowledgeable on the subject. If what the devs said is true (regarding their reasoning for all the scopes being off) then they're fucking morons. The devs claim to come from military backgrounds (I think it's mandatory in the country they're in). If so, they must've gotten the worst training possible.
Recoil doesn't affect bullet impact. If rapid successive shots are made (either in full auto or fast trigger pull semi auto) with the shooter not having proper aim, then the bullet impacts will be less accurate, but the recoil itself only affects a shooter after the trigger has been pulled and the bullet has left the barrel. A weapon like the anti-material rifle (in the game), which is semi auto, has always been hitting up and to the left, even on a perfectly lined up first shot.
Bullet drop also wouldn't explain the perpetually off scopes. Any non retarded shooter can make a shot group, see it's always hitting up and to the left, and just adjust their scope to compensate. In game, the weapons with misaligned scopes are predictably hitting the same spots, regardless of range.
The only things that should be affecting bullet impacts at average engagement distances seen in Helldiver 2 are wind (which isn't implemented in game, and would be negligible), gravity differences on various planets (which isn't implemented in the game), and improperly manufactured barrels heating up and causing bullet impacts to change as the barrel warps. For those unaware, some barrels will warp under temperature variance (mostly caused by poor manufacturing and quality control). As an example, I've gone to the range and shot one of my AR15s in winter, and as the barrel warmed up from successive fire, the point of impact changed 8-12 inches up and to the right, at 100 yards. But, like the other variables, this hasn't been implemented in the game.
If the devs did want to implement more accurate bullet physics, then the scopes should be zeroed at a specific distance, and the bullet will impact above or below that zero outside of that zero distance. If they did that, the devs would also need to implement much better scopes (most of the ones in game are laughably bad), so the player has notch marks to identify and range a target before shooting, and to account for bullet drop.
But, this discussion is merely academic, as the current map layouts and massive amounts of volumetric fog in game reduces all engagement distances to under 200 yards, and mostly under 100, so bullet physics would be a near useless addition.
The Dead By Daylight developers do the exact same time of bullshit with nerfing killers based purely off of "win rate". This led to Freddy Krueger, an already weak killer, getting nerfed purely because he was able to score cheap wins on clueless players.
The biggest, and first example, of the Arrowhead devs nerfing a weapon based on user metrics (rather than an understanding of their own game) was the railgun.
At the time (before being nerfed), it was the only effective method at killing the absurd amount of heavy enemies that the game throws at you on the higher difficulties. The game is designed such that heavily armored enemies can't even be damaged by most weapons (since they don't have enough penetration to make it through the armor), which forces the players to pick anti-armor weapons specifically to deal with those heavy enemies. At the time, the railgun was the only effective anti-armor gun the players had. Since the railgun nerf, AH has since buffed the other anti-armor weapons, nerfed heavy enemy spawn (on most missions), and nerfed some heavy enemies to make them easier to kill by those other anti-armor weapons. Since the nerf, almost no one uses the railgun anymore, because every aspect of the gun is better with the other anti-armor options. AH could completely revert the nerf and it wouldn't be considered OP by the standards of the current game.
I should also add that one of the reasons why AH nerfed the railgun was that there was a bug in the game back then where some players could 2 shot bile titans (the biggest heavy enemy threat at the time) with the railgun. And yet, instead of fixing the bug, they decided to nerf the weapon first. AH have also admitted to making gameplay changes based on what they see in Youtube videos from content creators.
The AH devs appear to be both malicious (toward their playerbase) and retarded at the same time. A potent combination of a warning to stay away.
I played Natural Selection 2 and the devs kept balancing around "50/50 win rate" between both sides (asymmetrical team, marines vs. aliens).
The game sucked ass because they didn't account for Marines being were way more fun to play as, with more cool toys, and Marines were much simpler and used standard FPS mechanics making them more newbie friendly. Some Aliens were powerful but it had a steep learning curve. It was also highly punishing to die as an Alien since you'd lose all your evolutions while Marines could just pick up their dropped shotgun again.
This meant every game the lobby would pile up with people trying to play as Marines and the only people who would play as the Aliens were the veterans.
Then they'd "balance" the game around one team of veterans vs one team of newbs for their faggy 50/50 win rate, thinking it was "balanced" l, and it just became shitty boring hell to be an alien while Marines were stomping around in mech suits having a blast.
I played natural selection 1 for thousands of hours. Only played natural selection 2 for like 100 hrs.
I had fun in natural selection 1 because of certain special scenarios that make it fun. I remember turtling for 2 hours as marines lol. Or being a gorge and hiding in a vent with healing chambers and spitting at marines trying to traverse to vent to get you lol.
But.. natural selection 2. Fucking assholes always surrender.
That and I saw so many missed opportunities.
Like I liked the 'power' idea, but it bewildered me that the whole map started "powered" and you could only get a place to have the lights out if the marines first built a power core and then aliens destroyed it. This made zero sense when it could've given the aliens a much-needed advantage in ambush and hive defense if the whole map started DARK until a power core was built in a room.
Aliens got almost nothing new, in fact they lost features (besides the unneeded alien commander). Rather than do something interesting and neat they just ported the alien gameplay over 1:1 and basically left it. Of the five lifeforms, you still only had one support class, one 'endgame' class so it doesn't even count, the starting class, the gorge, and the Fade. No new alien lifeform. No new way to evolve new abilities.
Like if the point is "evolution", wouldn't it have been interesting to give aliens upgrade trees they can spend evolution points on that would let them counter the tech the marines were researching? Like if the marines start getting flamethrowers and incendiary, aliens could evolve heat-resistant carapace or something?
Marines had all the fun and cool shit and aliens got a fucking commander.
Same here. I'm glad I held out and didn't buy it yet.
For the last few years it really has paid off for me to wait until the hype dissipates before buying a game.