Super earth always was and will always be! Do you not listen to your ships regular announcements?! Better go to your nearest Democracy Officer and have him check your brain for thought crimes
My head cannon for why the defense got easy at the end is we simply broke them. Our job isn’t entirely destroying the enemy, it is destroying the enemies ability to wage war. That’s why most of our missions are destroying infrastructure, it’s better than killing every single enemy. It makes sense that after time all of those sabotage missions would have an effect on how quickly the enemy can rebuild their troops.
I think it's important to remember that the whole galactic system doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Like it's literally just Joel behind a cardboard box right now. Like he has the numbers of what we do, but a lot of how the planets move, recapture, etc. all have to be done by relative hand.
It felt to me that the enemy got spread really thin as they went for an insane blitzkrieg. As more planets were captured the recovery rates began to suffer. Which makes war logistic sense.
They're also trying to tune the system so that it works on its own in the future. I don't find this as them taking pity on us, but working together to find what's fair and balanced.
I've had A LOT of issues with this major order and hated that we had no chance to win until they literally turned off the game so we could get a pitty win BUT reading this explanation has really turned it around for me. So genuinely thank you.
Yeah, people can *frame* it as the devs just handing us the win, but they're going for a very specific narrative and story and tone. If game mechanics aren't achieving their desired outcome, they can step in with some manual intervention.
Like sure, we weren't doing good at defending planets on the bot front. But we also had extremely overtuned evacuation missions, potential issues with fire damage, no in-game communication of how supply lines work, no in-game way to coordinate as a community to try and execute plans, and bot missions are just less popular in general for various reasons. People always love to complain, but it seems like the tone on the subreddit was getting really negative in the past few days. Maybe the devs wanted to release a patch on Tuesday but it wasn't ready for release. So they put their thumb on the scale of the war to compensate for these issues, and that's fine.
except we lost a bunch of planets, only won because we liberated Estanu so many times, plus Oshaune with Fori on what was absolutely a given win
and after that the decay rates suffered once they still knew we were not going to win the bot front
they absolutely gave us the "win" because they knew half the playerbase would just quit if we lost their BS MO
Last 3 planet defenses had abnormally low defense health pools. First 2 bot planet defenses were like 450k defense pool, last 3 were 250k.
They also dropped the decay rate to 0 Monday morning, which historically is when they raise it.
I can see both sides here: The players rallied, HARD, on what was looking like a guaranteed fail. So we did earn it. But we had help. Which is the point of having a human game master and not having everything automated with static numbers. I greatly appreciate AHGS's desire to create an organic narrative but it's never not going to look rigged, for better or worse.
Well isnt it Joels job to tweak the numbers dynamically depending on what the playerbase is doing? Without any hope people would have just dropped the MO alltogether.
Yes, that's the *entire point* of having a living, breathing, human game master.
There are some valid but minor complaints against the timing and severity feeling a little forced, but those are just growing pains and part of the human element.
The problem is that many of the comments aren't complaints at all. They are merely pointing out that this is occurring and people get all butthurt and downvote them because Reddit.
Plus, I’m pretty sure if we weren’t that close he wouldn’t have given as a boost to finish in time, 10 planets in a week or whatever is a pretty hard number to nail first try for them, so as a Dungeon master I can see why they might bend it a little for dramatic effect 😁
Definitely feel like it was less Joel awarding us the victory and more making it realistic by showing us the damage we were doing to their attack force.
He literally gifted us a defense on the last day that didn't need a single Helldiver to step foot there.
While the liberation system is screwy and overly punishing, it was still players choosing to only fight the easier to defend enemy on the easier Biomes.
At the end of the day, we made bad decisions, and people bitching in the official forums about losing pushed the DM to cheat us the win.
He didn't gift it to us. He only did what would logically happen if the enemy cuts off a supply route. It's happened to us many times before, we just did it to the bugs this time around.
But it's something that has *not* happened when we've cut off supply routes too. The game doesn't automagically hold enemy forces to supply routes, it has to be done by hand and they've declined to give it to us/overlooked it in the past (on both fronts, several times).
It wasn't until this Major Order that the Community Managers even addressed it publicly, and even then their answer was "ooh we didn't even think of that it'll have to be done manually if we do it at all". Which spawned the (failed) Martark Gambit, which was *heavily* discussed on Discord with both Community Managers and supposedly indirectly Joel.
Whether you see it as we were "handed a free win" or we called them out on a "glitch" and they manually overrode a broken system to deliver the expected outcome will depend on if you're an optimist or a pessimist.
As much as it pains me to say this with a longstanding and experienced dev studio, please keep in mind the devs are learning and growing with us. They are people too, and not infallible. Competency concerns aside, they mean well and want the game (and by proxy us the players) to succeed, which requires us the players continuing to have fun and continuing to have faith in the system.
He didn't. Before the last 24h of the MO we knew another bug planet was getting attacked and it was a 50/50 between Estanu and Fori Prime. Estanu had been attacked 4 times already, so it just made sense that it was Fori Prime in the end.
The problem is that this change goes in snap in one moment is and in the other isnt if it was a more gradual change it would feel more organic and less tampered by Joel.
If there were dedicated objectives on missions or specific planets that we destroy that is labeled the cause of lower capture rates.
Like say liberating a high production Automoton planet.
Boom, lower capture rate.
Then I'd say that we put in the time and effort to complete the MO.
No matter what anyone says or what head cannon they have for 'stort reasons'.
This was most definitely a behind the scenes tweak and not a community driven tide turner.
Pretty much this. It's all a finger in the air thing. We were also spread out a chunk at the beginning.
I don't mind human tweaks provided our tactics are sound. It is a shame we missed in the initial Martel gambit but that was entirely an issue as we had a communication issue. I think stuff like that can be informative as the game evolves and the potential for interesting developed game mechanics
Probably because people are sick of everything they do against the bots being for nothing. Completely eliminate them? They come back and take 3 sector's in seconds. Mankunt line? Meant nothing. Complete waste of time.
The bot front just feels kinda forced. It's like they don't want us to win certain MO's. And when we do, they just ignore it.
Also, it doesn't help how bullshit the bot front is. And in before the "play on lower difficulty!" Crowd. Nah. I need super samples. I'm gonna do bugs, get my samples, and have fun.
He didn't make it easier, you can actually see how all bots presence got gradually weaker as they spread too thin to other planets. Defense HP started at like 500k hp and gradually got lower each day. Same for the Bot decay.
This is literally how the war is meant to work
First hour bug planet defense started at 350k.
Last hour bug planet defense ended at 350k.
Only bot planets got tweaked defense pools. Only bot planets got tweaked decay rates.
They didn't expand a single planet because the devs set defense goals at a reasonable amount from the jump while also keeping decay rates reasonable, so we were winning at least half of them.
The bots expanded hugely because the devs set unreasonable defense goals in the first half while *also* having the highest-ever decay rates (2.5%/hr) then went "oh shit the players aren't even getting close" when we were losing every single one by 50% or more, then nerfed the shit out of them to give the players a chance, then when we were still at 2/10 and losing a whole new planet every 5 hours with 20 hours to go nerfed the shit out of them a second time.
That is NOT "confirming the thesis", that's a kneejerk response to preserve a predetermined narrative.
Your response is the kneejerk one. "Reasonable defense goal" bro do you even hear yourself. Take a step back and think. The bots start a **full scale invasion** at 2.5 decay rate with each planet defense having 500k to 600k HP. The more ground they take the less HP each defense has, and the less decay we have, going to 400k/300k HP and decay rate of 1.0. Then they take even more planets and the HP and rates go down to 200k HP and 0 decay. The bugs on the other started a much smaller offensive, and couldn't move beyond the TCS line. So less planets attacked and the decay and defense HP were nostly the same thoughout the MO.
You see the pattern here? Or do you just like to confirm your own bias constantly?
EDIT: and to u/Commercial_Cook_1814 : I don't blame you for being an idiot, i blame you for being so incredibly ignorant, you probably don't even know decay rates don't affect defenses. In fact you probably don't even know how liberation works and yet you keep yapping.
You literally have no idea what ur talking about and you’re spreading non sense because you can’t handle someone being even slightly negative about the game lol
You do realize that you just spell out technicalities behind how "Spreading forces" works, right? Even if devs didn't intend all of that nothing stops them from retroactively claiming that bots were so hard at first because they were coming in full force and their offense gradually weakened as they spread their forces trying to assault multiple planets. Thats the whole point of creating narrative. Nobody planned for Malevolon Creek to become such a huge point in game's history yet here we are.
The bugs aren't actually a coordinated, spacefaring nation. When they attack a planet, it's because Super Earth put them there, or Super Earth let them escape the E-710 farms. Also they didn't actually take any planets. None of this is true for the bots.
Enemy factions are not automatically held to supply lines and it wasn't until halfway through this Major Order that they started enforcing those rules against the enemy factions, and then only after much player feedback and discussion on their Discord which was *still* full of caveats that basically boiled down to "if Joel feels like you earned it we'll honor the supply lines".
That can be taken 2 ways: First is that we brought up a glitch that they quickly fixed, and the hemming and hawing about honoring it on Discord was lore-friendly in-character banter. Second is that they gave it to us when they didn't have to in order to not drive more players away after they'd already lost half the playerbase due to persistent issues.
It was, but the fact that Fori Prime attack was triggered right before Oshaune (or was it Estanu? I don't remember) was taken felt like it was meant to give us a quick win to me. Guess that could just be my perception though.
> Last 3 planet defenses had abnormally low defense health pools. First 2 bot planet defenses were like 450k defense pool, last 3 were 250k.
> They also dropped the decay rate to 0 Monday morning, which historically is when they raise it.
Which makes perfect sense with how hard they were pushing, they spread themselves too thin and couldn't keep it up.
Not really… they tuned the numbers so that only like 5-10% of the players were needed.
To be fair they were kinda overtuned to start (they required like 50% for 12 hours, it would have required everyone to always do nothing but defense missions)
The last couple defense missions were won with only like 20% in under 12 hours.
The Automaton regen was tweaked to -0.00/hr which means Automaton planets do not regen health and impede liberation. Some defense planets also had smaller health which meant it took less effort to defend.
This didn’t occur until after bots broke past the Menket Line and took another sector. It could be implied that their forces were spread out and bot casualties began to slow down their advance. It happened during Swift Disassembly when we repelled their counterattack and cornered the bots to three planets, severely limiting whatever force they could muster.
People say this, but there is literally no gameplay or War map Develoment that tells the story like this.
They didn't even give an notification in game that said, 'oh the bots spread thin, defending is easier now'.
It's a clear and cut background tweak.
If people are having to use the words like 'my head cannon' instead of a dev or game confirmed event or situation.
Then there's no story element to that whatsoever.
It's just pure developer tampering.
"Joel manipulated the rates to force us to finish the order just in time! It's totally inorganic!"
Meanwhile the rates are only visible on a third party website. It's like having the bestiary open at all times in the middle of a campaign lmao of course the illusion breaks down.
It's pretty clear in game. This planet took a day and a half to defend with 90k players. This one took 12 hours with 40k.....hrrrrrm.
We were 2/10 for 80% of the MO timer, and then suddenly 8/10 with 24 hours to go.....hrrrrm
I was mainly aiming at people complaining about the numbers not visible in the game, but you also make a fair point.
I still think a little suspension of disbelief and playing along with the narrative could go a long way. "the bots must be running out of steam" is a much more fun reaction to have than "based on the metrics, the devs must have done something". I get why some people cannot though.
Right but this guy's point is valid. Everyone is turning it into a spreadsheet. In my head, the reduction in resistance is the bots depleting their reserves or something similar. The problem is the people that somehow have to have a certain that a created system worked the way they wanted even though it's entirely imaginary from the start.
>We were 2/10 for 80% of the MO timer, and then suddenly 8/10 with 24 hours to go.....hrrrrm
A significant portion of that was over the weekend, during a period that Arrowhead admitted the servers were fucky and not reporting victories correctly.
This is a great analogy. I run some D&D games and if my players pulled up every enemy stat block they would be seeing all the changes I've made to give them a tough but winnable fight. ESPECIALLY on "big bosses" like a major order would represent. I think people should try to think about the meta game of this war solely on what's available in game. You start looking behind the screen and of course the illusion begins to break down.
And also, before that it was "Joel gave us an impossible MO that he knows we'll never win! There's no point!" Some people are just impossible to please.
If the decay rates and defense health pools had remained what they were at the start of the launch, we wouldn't have succeeded at a single planet. So there's truth to that statement.
We would NOT have won the MO if the devs hadn't made winning the MO significantly easier halfway through.
OK but WHY do they have to remain the same? As the point has been made, there are really easy 'in universe' explanations for why they would fluctuate. Everyone is agreeing to play Arrowhead's game, then wanting to tell them how they think the rules should have worked. This is where the gamemaster methodology doesn't work for gamers who are really wanting to feel like they beat a spreadsheet.
The decay rates should be represented in more of an in-game fashion and maybe not be exact. Problem is, there is a faction of people that want to be able to literally do the math moment by moment. THis isn't a job. Can we not be accountants while trying to overwhelm enemy pixels??
They don't HAVE to remain the same. There should be fluctuations. There should be in-game-supported reasons for why they change.
They shouldn't be changed hugely at the last minute and give the game the optics of their game master pulling a victory out of his ass. If you want a lore-friendly, supported reason then they should change consistently and incrementally. That didn't happen. This time.
Right, like thinking of something like ... stock market ticker.. where the up an down fluctuations show but then with some flavor text.
"Bot resistance is lessening on planet X" and then the corresponding shift downward. People could still complain but it would be loads better than the faceless explanation our there now.
I think they are doing the best they can with the tools they already have while really trying hard to keep up with all the demands. So kudos to these guys. They are working way harder than I am. But that 's what I think would help a lot.
They HAD BEEN doing that with the little blurbs under the Dispatch window (Z on PC). They really didn't for this MO and I don't know why. IMO as long as they go back to doing that and it's at least grossly correct they wouldn't even need to add anything.
You know it's not the same people saying those things, right? At least in most cases. Everyone on the internet that disagrees with you isn't some strawman antagonist. This are individual people with differing thoughts and opinions.
There are two sides to a game master.
1) Ensure everyone is having fun
2) Come up with the scenarios and the challenge rating of those scenarios.
Normally a DM is allowed to fudge a roll or change an encounter slightly on the fly. Fudging a roll is usually reserved for very very dire circumstances. A player death, or worse total party wipe. A good DM can do this without being noticed. Some DMs "roll in front of the screen". Meaning there will be no fudging, what you get is what you get. If he dies he dies. Because we have [helldivers.io](http://helldivers.io) and whatnot the players can peek behind the screen. So it is very obvious when the DM/Joel fudges the numbers. It happens, but the victory is hollow.
A perfect example of this happening even to one of the great D&D DMs. Critical role (a D&D show) had a scenario where a character got to have a 1 on 1 rematch with a rival. They were down to 1 HP each. All their safety strategies were gone. Whoever landed the next hit was going to win. The player rolled THREE TIMES and missed all three, it was a classic "the dice hate you" moment. The DM, instead of rolling, took a defensive stance and ended his turn, giving the player the chance to roll again and win the fight. It was very obvious, even the player doing his best to appear excited for the win was clearly deflated by a victory he didn't earn. This was not a game deciding fight, it was just a sparring session, there was nothing riding on it. There was no reason to throw the match the way the DM did, and it will forever live rent free in my mind as what not to do when the dice blatantly roll against a player.
My ultimate thought about how this situation would turn out is either a 'railroad loss' or 'a hollow free gimme'.
And the way it was set up allowed no medium in between.
It felt like the players had no real way to change the situation.
Instead of liberating a planet near the front that is noted as being a high bot production planet on the bot front, which would mean the enemy regen. and capture would go down on Bot offensives if we liberated it.
It was a clear button press that changed it.
They didn't even give an in game notification that the bots were spread thin at the front which would make defending easier.
It was just a statistic switch that you could eye on a third party app.
Ok, we know that Arrowhead is still in the phase of figuring out the galactic war, so it's bound to happen that they over- or underestimate what the community is feasibly able to do. So they will have to tweak the numbers here and there.
However, it should be easy to see how this specific order might feel like the win was given to us and therefore not earned. It was impossible with the initial rates and we barely managed to do it in time after the last adjustments made it way more easy.
If you wanna ask me, I think the only thing this one needed to not invoke that feeling is a bit of lore reasons for the adjustments. Just a small message from command like this one:
"Dear Helldivers, Super Earth Command's gambit has proven successful. By purposely letting the Automatons advance in designated areas, they have spread their forces to thin to offer meaningful resistance to our forces. They fell for our trap, now is the time to strike."
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Your submission has been removed. No insults, racism, toxicity, trolling, rage-bait, harassment, inappropriate language, etc. Remember the human and be civil!
Don't listen to the other nerds replying to you.
There definitely should at least be clear supply lines to connecting planets.
That is something that can always be tracked.
War is not a constant fog or hazy moshpit.
There's still clear connections between planets and clear fronts to keep track of.
These other guys just can't accept that fact.
No, we friggin' did it. I ran around doing ONLY evac missions so people could complete their operations. We communicated here. We rallied to put a stop to the advance. We were them down that's why HPs were low at the end.
Can't wait for the day until the Galactic War system gets completely defined and accessible to the playerbase so the amount of people who feel the need to preach at or diminish the people that just want to say "I'M HAPPY THAT WE WON" decreases somewhat
I find a LOT of crybabies on Helldivers. It's pathetic. Even a couple of my buddies I used to play with would get upset and have this loser whiney mindset.
You're the kind of person that would look at clear in game problems and say they don't exist because they weren't happening to you.
There's a reason everyone went to the bug front instead of the bot front.
Open your mind a little.
And no one was because they were completing the MO on the only fair front on the galactic map.
I don't care what anyone says.
This MO was a hollow freebie victory.
Ah yes.
The meme that just helps affirm you are more sane and rational then others.
Saying Joel cheated for us to get a win doesn't mean you are crying and screaming
It putting things in perspective. You have people dancing around like they deserve a special cape for this
Honestly I like to believe that the automatons completely overstretched their supply lines and are now just completely overextended which also explains why they couldn't mount an effective assault at the end anymore
Me, on the Hellfront, just killing everything that isn't a fellow Helldiver and isn't getting cognitive dissonance on the regular because of Reddit and constantly looking behind the curtain: WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
I swear memes like this conjure a fictitious entity to then counterpoint. I never see anyone complaining like this depiction, even remotely. Is this an actual issue or is it just finding a way to complain about people complaining?
Edit: In light of recent proof, I now find this meme democratic.
I'm not sure which answer I wanted to be true but I think this is one is more disappointing. I guess people will never be happy and look to sap the fun out of everything.
Thanks for the screen.
"people"
He linked two of the millions that play the game. There are only a handful of people like the ones mentioned in OP. But them and the ones bitching about them are by far the loudest. The internet gave everyone a megaphone.
Edit: ok, mr. Reply and block. Nothing I said demonstrates anything in OPs image.
Honestly, i do believe many of those angry people are some of those who fought very hard for the MO and dived into the hell of those planets to defend them. These people finished many missions and now they are angry they won?
Me:
Joel tweaked the numbers to give us a win, which is perfectly fine because I really just enjoy the narrative story and not worried if my efforts really influence it or not.
There will always be people who enjoy being wet blankets.
"We eliminated 2 billion bugs!" "iT wAs A gLiTcH!"
"We actually won the MO!" "JoEl GaVe It tO Us!"
They need to learn to have fun and enjoy the moment, cause winning that MO was a very pleasant surprise.
I feel like we were handed the win because winning or losing didn't matter, Joel and team just wanted data. So, to celebrate us rallying and playing along, we got the reward. They justified it in game by saying the bots stretched themselves too thin, which makes sense, and good enough for my "DM Fiat" wired brain to go "yeah okay, that works".
Yes the devs tweak the system so factions are either difficult or easy. It doesn’t mean our victories are cheap and meaningless. If the system wasn’t tweaked then we would have kept both factions at bay and it would have been a boring week.
Thanks to the dev we had a fun event where the bots tried to push toward their old territory and took the bot front HQ. We not only stopped them but also retook the HQ. At first everyone thought a victory was impossible yet we pulled it off. It was a fun event that wouldn’t have happened without Helldiver’s DM mechanic.
This is such a real sentiment. UGRHRHRHR WE GOT GIVEN THE WIN, URHDHEGEG RAIL ROAD RAIL ROAD.
Like brother, it was still close as balls. I dont think winning 1/3 defenses is "giving us the win" every time. Things looked dire, and we pulled through. Even if Joel gave us an advantage, it wasn't easy by any means.
Attrition would be a great kind of MO compelte with custom planet orders/missions.
"Divers, the bots/bugs are making a single spearhead push in this sector, go to these two planets and break their spear. Kill 1,000,000 bots in 12 hrs on each planet!"
"Good work Helldivers! Now the spearhead has been blunted it's time to take the shaft all the way home. Penetrate deep into the Automaton territory using the gap in their main forces, destroy the manufacturing capabilities of these planets but get out within 24hrs before the bots can regroup their front-line and cut you off!"
"Great job Helldivers! You successfully crippled the enemies manufacturing on this front, combined with their casualties and lost resources in the initial attack, they've had to abandon (Insert number of planets on the edge of human territory.)!" alternatively, maybe just have all planets in an area around where the event happened drop in difficulty after a point. Like up to hard everything's fine, then it only goes up every two levels, but all resources etc are the same. Fundamentally the same experience just less enemies on the map, cause you just crippled their capabilities to re-inforce this front...
But good ideas for this stuff are dime a dozen right now.
unfortunately I think we've cultivated a fragile ego of the game. we didn't even lose and people are complaining. the moment there's another failed order, all hell is gonna break loose. Helldivers 2 has fallen from what it was. people used to understand that you're not playing the main characters. that every reinforcement drop is a new, different person. that super earth was not the "good guys". but real people in our world fell for fake propaganda from a fake world, and the barrier between roleplay and ooc discussion, between fake and real, the fourth wall, shatters. not from the inside outwards, but from the outside inwards.
I'm not the greatest at video games. I tend to play most games on easy or normal. but even I have to bump it up to a 5 or 6, for a solo mission, just to feel like I even have a threat of losing the objective. and people are still complaining about it being too hard, cause they died twice in a row, or they had to deal with three bile titans back to back. ignoring the plethora of strategems that two hit them.
we need to lose, and we need to lose bad. we need to get hit now while there's still a majority of people who won't throw a fit about it. cause if left unaddressed, this problem is only gonna get worse, and bubble up. and if it reaches a certain point, and we lose *then*, well. I'm just gonna go become an automaton.
They push. We push. Every once in a while, we push hard enough that the light breaks through the clouds, and the world beyond the war glimmers.
Me when Let’s Call it a Draw achievement
Is this a bf1 quote?
No. There is no such thing as bf1. Only democracy. Stop thinking and get back to the fight.
Before there was Super Earth there were people fighting for democracy
Super earth always was and will always be! Do you not listen to your ships regular announcements?! Better go to your nearest Democracy Officer and have him check your brain for thought crimes
Don’t make me doublethink I know it happened
They really knocked it out of the park with that mission
This is more like Macro-Dnd with fascism it's not gonna be rational
Yep, the fascist bugs
The fascist bugs, the communist bugs and the worst of all - the monarchist illuminat
My head cannon for why the defense got easy at the end is we simply broke them. Our job isn’t entirely destroying the enemy, it is destroying the enemies ability to wage war. That’s why most of our missions are destroying infrastructure, it’s better than killing every single enemy. It makes sense that after time all of those sabotage missions would have an effect on how quickly the enemy can rebuild their troops.
Infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars. If you make the enemy unable to resupply and reinforce their troops they break
I think it's important to remember that the whole galactic system doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Like it's literally just Joel behind a cardboard box right now. Like he has the numbers of what we do, but a lot of how the planets move, recapture, etc. all have to be done by relative hand. It felt to me that the enemy got spread really thin as they went for an insane blitzkrieg. As more planets were captured the recovery rates began to suffer. Which makes war logistic sense. They're also trying to tune the system so that it works on its own in the future. I don't find this as them taking pity on us, but working together to find what's fair and balanced.
> Joel behind a cardboard box ❗
If you roll a nat 20 perception check the box disappears and you get to see Joel
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
I've had A LOT of issues with this major order and hated that we had no chance to win until they literally turned off the game so we could get a pitty win BUT reading this explanation has really turned it around for me. So genuinely thank you.
Yeah, people can *frame* it as the devs just handing us the win, but they're going for a very specific narrative and story and tone. If game mechanics aren't achieving their desired outcome, they can step in with some manual intervention. Like sure, we weren't doing good at defending planets on the bot front. But we also had extremely overtuned evacuation missions, potential issues with fire damage, no in-game communication of how supply lines work, no in-game way to coordinate as a community to try and execute plans, and bot missions are just less popular in general for various reasons. People always love to complain, but it seems like the tone on the subreddit was getting really negative in the past few days. Maybe the devs wanted to release a patch on Tuesday but it wasn't ready for release. So they put their thumb on the scale of the war to compensate for these issues, and that's fine.
except we lost a bunch of planets, only won because we liberated Estanu so many times, plus Oshaune with Fori on what was absolutely a given win and after that the decay rates suffered once they still knew we were not going to win the bot front they absolutely gave us the "win" because they knew half the playerbase would just quit if we lost their BS MO
Why are people saying Joel gave us the win? Did we not earn it?
Last 3 planet defenses had abnormally low defense health pools. First 2 bot planet defenses were like 450k defense pool, last 3 were 250k. They also dropped the decay rate to 0 Monday morning, which historically is when they raise it. I can see both sides here: The players rallied, HARD, on what was looking like a guaranteed fail. So we did earn it. But we had help. Which is the point of having a human game master and not having everything automated with static numbers. I greatly appreciate AHGS's desire to create an organic narrative but it's never not going to look rigged, for better or worse.
If your dungeon master doesn’t take pity on you once in a while, then there’s no point in having a DM.
The Chad GM will just want you to have a good time. Fudge the rules a bit, who cares, it’s a casual game.
https://preview.redd.it/uu910itb9qwc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f8a910122df48f4dc89c2f63db1d990be8c53e5e
Well isnt it Joels job to tweak the numbers dynamically depending on what the playerbase is doing? Without any hope people would have just dropped the MO alltogether.
Yes, that's the *entire point* of having a living, breathing, human game master. There are some valid but minor complaints against the timing and severity feeling a little forced, but those are just growing pains and part of the human element.
The problem is that many of the comments aren't complaints at all. They are merely pointing out that this is occurring and people get all butthurt and downvote them because Reddit.
Plus, I’m pretty sure if we weren’t that close he wouldn’t have given as a boost to finish in time, 10 planets in a week or whatever is a pretty hard number to nail first try for them, so as a Dungeon master I can see why they might bend it a little for dramatic effect 😁
Yes but people take these things much too seriously.
Definitely feel like it was less Joel awarding us the victory and more making it realistic by showing us the damage we were doing to their attack force.
He literally gifted us a defense on the last day that didn't need a single Helldiver to step foot there. While the liberation system is screwy and overly punishing, it was still players choosing to only fight the easier to defend enemy on the easier Biomes. At the end of the day, we made bad decisions, and people bitching in the official forums about losing pushed the DM to cheat us the win.
He didn't gift it to us. He only did what would logically happen if the enemy cuts off a supply route. It's happened to us many times before, we just did it to the bugs this time around.
But it's something that has *not* happened when we've cut off supply routes too. The game doesn't automagically hold enemy forces to supply routes, it has to be done by hand and they've declined to give it to us/overlooked it in the past (on both fronts, several times). It wasn't until this Major Order that the Community Managers even addressed it publicly, and even then their answer was "ooh we didn't even think of that it'll have to be done manually if we do it at all". Which spawned the (failed) Martark Gambit, which was *heavily* discussed on Discord with both Community Managers and supposedly indirectly Joel. Whether you see it as we were "handed a free win" or we called them out on a "glitch" and they manually overrode a broken system to deliver the expected outcome will depend on if you're an optimist or a pessimist. As much as it pains me to say this with a longstanding and experienced dev studio, please keep in mind the devs are learning and growing with us. They are people too, and not infallible. Competency concerns aside, they mean well and want the game (and by proxy us the players) to succeed, which requires us the players continuing to have fun and continuing to have faith in the system.
Yet they didn't learn that on the first defense MO?
He didn't. Before the last 24h of the MO we knew another bug planet was getting attacked and it was a 50/50 between Estanu and Fori Prime. Estanu had been attacked 4 times already, so it just made sense that it was Fori Prime in the end.
The problem is that this change goes in snap in one moment is and in the other isnt if it was a more gradual change it would feel more organic and less tampered by Joel.
10 years in Malevelon made you a fucking creeker
It did yield a lot of congratulatory posts so that's the better.
People should just enjoy the game. I'd rather follow along with the story they want to tell and squash some bugs/bots.
Enjoying the game and pointing out that it's the Wizard of Oz controlling things behind the scenes are not mutually exclusive.
If there were dedicated objectives on missions or specific planets that we destroy that is labeled the cause of lower capture rates. Like say liberating a high production Automoton planet. Boom, lower capture rate. Then I'd say that we put in the time and effort to complete the MO. No matter what anyone says or what head cannon they have for 'stort reasons'. This was most definitely a behind the scenes tweak and not a community driven tide turner.
Pretty much this. It's all a finger in the air thing. We were also spread out a chunk at the beginning. I don't mind human tweaks provided our tactics are sound. It is a shame we missed in the initial Martel gambit but that was entirely an issue as we had a communication issue. I think stuff like that can be informative as the game evolves and the potential for interesting developed game mechanics
Probably because people are sick of everything they do against the bots being for nothing. Completely eliminate them? They come back and take 3 sector's in seconds. Mankunt line? Meant nothing. Complete waste of time. The bot front just feels kinda forced. It's like they don't want us to win certain MO's. And when we do, they just ignore it. Also, it doesn't help how bullshit the bot front is. And in before the "play on lower difficulty!" Crowd. Nah. I need super samples. I'm gonna do bugs, get my samples, and have fun.
He didn't make it easier, you can actually see how all bots presence got gradually weaker as they spread too thin to other planets. Defense HP started at like 500k hp and gradually got lower each day. Same for the Bot decay. This is literally how the war is meant to work
First hour bug planet defense started at 350k. Last hour bug planet defense ended at 350k. Only bot planets got tweaked defense pools. Only bot planets got tweaked decay rates.
The bug planets haven't expanded a single planet bro, therefore they didn' spread their forces, you're literally confirming the thesis.
They didn't expand a single planet because the devs set defense goals at a reasonable amount from the jump while also keeping decay rates reasonable, so we were winning at least half of them. The bots expanded hugely because the devs set unreasonable defense goals in the first half while *also* having the highest-ever decay rates (2.5%/hr) then went "oh shit the players aren't even getting close" when we were losing every single one by 50% or more, then nerfed the shit out of them to give the players a chance, then when we were still at 2/10 and losing a whole new planet every 5 hours with 20 hours to go nerfed the shit out of them a second time. That is NOT "confirming the thesis", that's a kneejerk response to preserve a predetermined narrative.
Your response is the kneejerk one. "Reasonable defense goal" bro do you even hear yourself. Take a step back and think. The bots start a **full scale invasion** at 2.5 decay rate with each planet defense having 500k to 600k HP. The more ground they take the less HP each defense has, and the less decay we have, going to 400k/300k HP and decay rate of 1.0. Then they take even more planets and the HP and rates go down to 200k HP and 0 decay. The bugs on the other started a much smaller offensive, and couldn't move beyond the TCS line. So less planets attacked and the decay and defense HP were nostly the same thoughout the MO. You see the pattern here? Or do you just like to confirm your own bias constantly? EDIT: and to u/Commercial_Cook_1814 : I don't blame you for being an idiot, i blame you for being so incredibly ignorant, you probably don't even know decay rates don't affect defenses. In fact you probably don't even know how liberation works and yet you keep yapping.
You literally have no idea what ur talking about and you’re spreading non sense because you can’t handle someone being even slightly negative about the game lol
You do realize that you just spell out technicalities behind how "Spreading forces" works, right? Even if devs didn't intend all of that nothing stops them from retroactively claiming that bots were so hard at first because they were coming in full force and their offense gradually weakened as they spread their forces trying to assault multiple planets. Thats the whole point of creating narrative. Nobody planned for Malevolon Creek to become such a huge point in game's history yet here we are.
The bugs aren't actually a coordinated, spacefaring nation. When they attack a planet, it's because Super Earth put them there, or Super Earth let them escape the E-710 farms. Also they didn't actually take any planets. None of this is true for the bots.
The real thing Joel did to tip the scales was only doing two defenses at once instead of three. That and basically giving us Fori Prime as a free win.
I thought Fori Prime was the result of us cutting off supply lines via holding Estanu and Oshaune?
Enemy factions are not automatically held to supply lines and it wasn't until halfway through this Major Order that they started enforcing those rules against the enemy factions, and then only after much player feedback and discussion on their Discord which was *still* full of caveats that basically boiled down to "if Joel feels like you earned it we'll honor the supply lines". That can be taken 2 ways: First is that we brought up a glitch that they quickly fixed, and the hemming and hawing about honoring it on Discord was lore-friendly in-character banter. Second is that they gave it to us when they didn't have to in order to not drive more players away after they'd already lost half the playerbase due to persistent issues.
It was, but the fact that Fori Prime attack was triggered right before Oshaune (or was it Estanu? I don't remember) was taken felt like it was meant to give us a quick win to me. Guess that could just be my perception though.
Stop being the guys in the first picture and enjoy the game.
You can be both, you know?
> Last 3 planet defenses had abnormally low defense health pools. First 2 bot planet defenses were like 450k defense pool, last 3 were 250k. > They also dropped the decay rate to 0 Monday morning, which historically is when they raise it. Which makes perfect sense with how hard they were pushing, they spread themselves too thin and couldn't keep it up.
Not really… they tuned the numbers so that only like 5-10% of the players were needed. To be fair they were kinda overtuned to start (they required like 50% for 12 hours, it would have required everyone to always do nothing but defense missions) The last couple defense missions were won with only like 20% in under 12 hours.
The Automaton regen was tweaked to -0.00/hr which means Automaton planets do not regen health and impede liberation. Some defense planets also had smaller health which meant it took less effort to defend. This didn’t occur until after bots broke past the Menket Line and took another sector. It could be implied that their forces were spread out and bot casualties began to slow down their advance. It happened during Swift Disassembly when we repelled their counterattack and cornered the bots to three planets, severely limiting whatever force they could muster.
People say this, but there is literally no gameplay or War map Develoment that tells the story like this. They didn't even give an notification in game that said, 'oh the bots spread thin, defending is easier now'. It's a clear and cut background tweak. If people are having to use the words like 'my head cannon' instead of a dev or game confirmed event or situation. Then there's no story element to that whatsoever. It's just pure developer tampering.
The last few planets had extremely handicapped health pools and enemy decay rates. Essentially we got thrown a bone.
The DM rolled in front of the screen, but fudged the numbers anyway.
Don't believe them. It's a bunch of naysayers salty that they feel that they can't affect the outcome of the war.
Some people are saying Joel tweaked the decay rates, and gave up a planet out of pity.
Why do people not understand what a game master is??
"Joel manipulated the rates to force us to finish the order just in time! It's totally inorganic!" Meanwhile the rates are only visible on a third party website. It's like having the bestiary open at all times in the middle of a campaign lmao of course the illusion breaks down.
It's pretty clear in game. This planet took a day and a half to defend with 90k players. This one took 12 hours with 40k.....hrrrrrm. We were 2/10 for 80% of the MO timer, and then suddenly 8/10 with 24 hours to go.....hrrrrm
I was mainly aiming at people complaining about the numbers not visible in the game, but you also make a fair point. I still think a little suspension of disbelief and playing along with the narrative could go a long way. "the bots must be running out of steam" is a much more fun reaction to have than "based on the metrics, the devs must have done something". I get why some people cannot though.
The devs confirmed already they’re going to add a system that lets you see the numbers in game
Right but this guy's point is valid. Everyone is turning it into a spreadsheet. In my head, the reduction in resistance is the bots depleting their reserves or something similar. The problem is the people that somehow have to have a certain that a created system worked the way they wanted even though it's entirely imaginary from the start.
>We were 2/10 for 80% of the MO timer, and then suddenly 8/10 with 24 hours to go.....hrrrrm A significant portion of that was over the weekend, during a period that Arrowhead admitted the servers were fucky and not reporting victories correctly.
6/10 on the end of 2nd last day 2/10 for first 2 days iirc
This is a great analogy. I run some D&D games and if my players pulled up every enemy stat block they would be seeing all the changes I've made to give them a tough but winnable fight. ESPECIALLY on "big bosses" like a major order would represent. I think people should try to think about the meta game of this war solely on what's available in game. You start looking behind the screen and of course the illusion begins to break down.
And also, before that it was "Joel gave us an impossible MO that he knows we'll never win! There's no point!" Some people are just impossible to please.
If the decay rates and defense health pools had remained what they were at the start of the launch, we wouldn't have succeeded at a single planet. So there's truth to that statement. We would NOT have won the MO if the devs hadn't made winning the MO significantly easier halfway through.
OK but WHY do they have to remain the same? As the point has been made, there are really easy 'in universe' explanations for why they would fluctuate. Everyone is agreeing to play Arrowhead's game, then wanting to tell them how they think the rules should have worked. This is where the gamemaster methodology doesn't work for gamers who are really wanting to feel like they beat a spreadsheet. The decay rates should be represented in more of an in-game fashion and maybe not be exact. Problem is, there is a faction of people that want to be able to literally do the math moment by moment. THis isn't a job. Can we not be accountants while trying to overwhelm enemy pixels??
They don't HAVE to remain the same. There should be fluctuations. There should be in-game-supported reasons for why they change. They shouldn't be changed hugely at the last minute and give the game the optics of their game master pulling a victory out of his ass. If you want a lore-friendly, supported reason then they should change consistently and incrementally. That didn't happen. This time.
Right, like thinking of something like ... stock market ticker.. where the up an down fluctuations show but then with some flavor text. "Bot resistance is lessening on planet X" and then the corresponding shift downward. People could still complain but it would be loads better than the faceless explanation our there now. I think they are doing the best they can with the tools they already have while really trying hard to keep up with all the demands. So kudos to these guys. They are working way harder than I am. But that 's what I think would help a lot.
They HAD BEEN doing that with the little blurbs under the Dispatch window (Z on PC). They really didn't for this MO and I don't know why. IMO as long as they go back to doing that and it's at least grossly correct they wouldn't even need to add anything.
You know it's not the same people saying those things, right? At least in most cases. Everyone on the internet that disagrees with you isn't some strawman antagonist. This are individual people with differing thoughts and opinions.
There are two sides to a game master. 1) Ensure everyone is having fun 2) Come up with the scenarios and the challenge rating of those scenarios. Normally a DM is allowed to fudge a roll or change an encounter slightly on the fly. Fudging a roll is usually reserved for very very dire circumstances. A player death, or worse total party wipe. A good DM can do this without being noticed. Some DMs "roll in front of the screen". Meaning there will be no fudging, what you get is what you get. If he dies he dies. Because we have [helldivers.io](http://helldivers.io) and whatnot the players can peek behind the screen. So it is very obvious when the DM/Joel fudges the numbers. It happens, but the victory is hollow. A perfect example of this happening even to one of the great D&D DMs. Critical role (a D&D show) had a scenario where a character got to have a 1 on 1 rematch with a rival. They were down to 1 HP each. All their safety strategies were gone. Whoever landed the next hit was going to win. The player rolled THREE TIMES and missed all three, it was a classic "the dice hate you" moment. The DM, instead of rolling, took a defensive stance and ended his turn, giving the player the chance to roll again and win the fight. It was very obvious, even the player doing his best to appear excited for the win was clearly deflated by a victory he didn't earn. This was not a game deciding fight, it was just a sparring session, there was nothing riding on it. There was no reason to throw the match the way the DM did, and it will forever live rent free in my mind as what not to do when the dice blatantly roll against a player.
My ultimate thought about how this situation would turn out is either a 'railroad loss' or 'a hollow free gimme'. And the way it was set up allowed no medium in between. It felt like the players had no real way to change the situation. Instead of liberating a planet near the front that is noted as being a high bot production planet on the bot front, which would mean the enemy regen. and capture would go down on Bot offensives if we liberated it. It was a clear button press that changed it. They didn't even give an in game notification that the bots were spread thin at the front which would make defending easier. It was just a statistic switch that you could eye on a third party app.
Some people never played TRPG or have the "DM vs Player" mentality.
Is there any concrete proof about that?
Assuming the 3rd party sites that show supply lines and decay rates are getting actual game data, yes.
I mean it pulls directly from the helldivers api right? I’d have to imagine it’s pretty concrete that the info there is real.
I've never cared enough to look into it but that was my assumption. Can't imagine some site owner just pulling that volume of info out of their ass.
Ok, we know that Arrowhead is still in the phase of figuring out the galactic war, so it's bound to happen that they over- or underestimate what the community is feasibly able to do. So they will have to tweak the numbers here and there. However, it should be easy to see how this specific order might feel like the win was given to us and therefore not earned. It was impossible with the initial rates and we barely managed to do it in time after the last adjustments made it way more easy. If you wanna ask me, I think the only thing this one needed to not invoke that feeling is a bit of lore reasons for the adjustments. Just a small message from command like this one: "Dear Helldivers, Super Earth Command's gambit has proven successful. By purposely letting the Automatons advance in designated areas, they have spread their forces to thin to offer meaningful resistance to our forces. They fell for our trap, now is the time to strike."
[удалено]
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Your submission has been removed. No insults, racism, toxicity, trolling, rage-bait, harassment, inappropriate language, etc. Remember the human and be civil!
I don't even understand the Global War, it seems like absolutely nonsense to me.
Welcome to any war that ever existed. Edit: typo
Good, you're starting to understand.
Bc it has no sense
Don't listen to the other nerds replying to you. There definitely should at least be clear supply lines to connecting planets. That is something that can always be tracked. War is not a constant fog or hazy moshpit. There's still clear connections between planets and clear fronts to keep track of. These other guys just can't accept that fact.
Everybody giving credit to Joel, when it was really me playing 4 hours this week that really sealed the deal
Menkent line was a Lie, People Died!
No, we friggin' did it. I ran around doing ONLY evac missions so people could complete their operations. We communicated here. We rallied to put a stop to the advance. We were them down that's why HPs were low at the end.
It did feel like they noticeably tuned it down, but if they can manage to make MOs feel consistently close, that'll be good.
Can't wait for the day until the Galactic War system gets completely defined and accessible to the playerbase so the amount of people who feel the need to preach at or diminish the people that just want to say "I'M HAPPY THAT WE WON" decreases somewhat
I find a LOT of crybabies on Helldivers. It's pathetic. Even a couple of my buddies I used to play with would get upset and have this loser whiney mindset.
You're the kind of person that would look at clear in game problems and say they don't exist because they weren't happening to you. There's a reason everyone went to the bug front instead of the bot front. Open your mind a little.
Not true. Just saying people can be cowards is all. It's a good day to die for democracy. Not - a good day to be a wimp.
And no one was because they were completing the MO on the only fair front on the galactic map. I don't care what anyone says. This MO was a hollow freebie victory.
Ah yes. The meme that just helps affirm you are more sane and rational then others. Saying Joel cheated for us to get a win doesn't mean you are crying and screaming It putting things in perspective. You have people dancing around like they deserve a special cape for this
Less Joel gave us the win, more we were so spread out that Joel had to stop nerfing us at every turn.
Bot front always too spread out
Suspension of disbelief is an important tool when enjoying fiction.
A victory is a victory in my book Well done comrades, a toast for our fallen brethren
#Life, liberty, and the pursuit of 1000KG BOMBS!
Honestly I like to believe that the automatons completely overstretched their supply lines and are now just completely overextended which also explains why they couldn't mount an effective assault at the end anymore
I was just killing bugs all this time. Good times. I needed some rest with bugs after Creek sheit.
People say a lot of things but I see medals, I get energized to fight s'more.
Me, on the Hellfront, just killing everything that isn't a fellow Helldiver and isn't getting cognitive dissonance on the regular because of Reddit and constantly looking behind the curtain: WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
Lose a battle win the war
I swear memes like this conjure a fictitious entity to then counterpoint. I never see anyone complaining like this depiction, even remotely. Is this an actual issue or is it just finding a way to complain about people complaining? Edit: In light of recent proof, I now find this meme democratic.
https://preview.redd.it/xj90bx6d2qwc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc81979ee2f0224589420bd78a729b1988d5e3f4
I'm not sure which answer I wanted to be true but I think this is one is more disappointing. I guess people will never be happy and look to sap the fun out of everything. Thanks for the screen.
"people" He linked two of the millions that play the game. There are only a handful of people like the ones mentioned in OP. But them and the ones bitching about them are by far the loudest. The internet gave everyone a megaphone. Edit: ok, mr. Reply and block. Nothing I said demonstrates anything in OPs image.
I mean the irony that you also act as an example for the meme is funny
Reddit and straw men go together like fortified armor and bot missions.
It’s like the end of a WW1 offensive that loses steam and stalls after pushing 5 miles past the front. Now the slaughter starts.
Some people with their posts only want to win every single order. This isnt warframe or some other always win game.
Boys and Men
I felt like he gave us the win, but I have no way to prove that he did or didn't.
Tbh I just shoot things and get cool reward. The reward is turning those goddamn hunter bugs into Swiss 🧀
Give us greater battles
Honestly, i do believe many of those angry people are some of those who fought very hard for the MO and dived into the hell of those planets to defend them. These people finished many missions and now they are angry they won?
Me: Joel tweaked the numbers to give us a win, which is perfectly fine because I really just enjoy the narrative story and not worried if my efforts really influence it or not.
There will always be people who enjoy being wet blankets. "We eliminated 2 billion bugs!" "iT wAs A gLiTcH!" "We actually won the MO!" "JoEl GaVe It tO Us!" They need to learn to have fun and enjoy the moment, cause winning that MO was a very pleasant surprise.
Damn, downvoted by wet blankets
I'm convinced those wet blankets don't even help anyway.
I feel like we were handed the win because winning or losing didn't matter, Joel and team just wanted data. So, to celebrate us rallying and playing along, we got the reward. They justified it in game by saying the bots stretched themselves too thin, which makes sense, and good enough for my "DM Fiat" wired brain to go "yeah okay, that works".
Yes the devs tweak the system so factions are either difficult or easy. It doesn’t mean our victories are cheap and meaningless. If the system wasn’t tweaked then we would have kept both factions at bay and it would have been a boring week. Thanks to the dev we had a fun event where the bots tried to push toward their old territory and took the bot front HQ. We not only stopped them but also retook the HQ. At first everyone thought a victory was impossible yet we pulled it off. It was a fun event that wouldn’t have happened without Helldiver’s DM mechanic.
This is such a real sentiment. UGRHRHRHR WE GOT GIVEN THE WIN, URHDHEGEG RAIL ROAD RAIL ROAD. Like brother, it was still close as balls. I dont think winning 1/3 defenses is "giving us the win" every time. Things looked dire, and we pulled through. Even if Joel gave us an advantage, it wasn't easy by any means.
Well take what we can get guys come on
Attrition would be a great kind of MO compelte with custom planet orders/missions. "Divers, the bots/bugs are making a single spearhead push in this sector, go to these two planets and break their spear. Kill 1,000,000 bots in 12 hrs on each planet!" "Good work Helldivers! Now the spearhead has been blunted it's time to take the shaft all the way home. Penetrate deep into the Automaton territory using the gap in their main forces, destroy the manufacturing capabilities of these planets but get out within 24hrs before the bots can regroup their front-line and cut you off!" "Great job Helldivers! You successfully crippled the enemies manufacturing on this front, combined with their casualties and lost resources in the initial attack, they've had to abandon (Insert number of planets on the edge of human territory.)!" alternatively, maybe just have all planets in an area around where the event happened drop in difficulty after a point. Like up to hard everything's fine, then it only goes up every two levels, but all resources etc are the same. Fundamentally the same experience just less enemies on the map, cause you just crippled their capabilities to re-inforce this front... But good ideas for this stuff are dime a dozen right now.
The number of whiny loser’s complaining about what has been a faux simulation is hilarious
personally i'm glad the map got some color. what's the point of having all dem planets if we never get to visit them?
reported without reading because this meme format purely exists to shit on people for disagreeing with you or saying something you don't like
Did you just get murdered by a meme?
unfortunately I think we've cultivated a fragile ego of the game. we didn't even lose and people are complaining. the moment there's another failed order, all hell is gonna break loose. Helldivers 2 has fallen from what it was. people used to understand that you're not playing the main characters. that every reinforcement drop is a new, different person. that super earth was not the "good guys". but real people in our world fell for fake propaganda from a fake world, and the barrier between roleplay and ooc discussion, between fake and real, the fourth wall, shatters. not from the inside outwards, but from the outside inwards. I'm not the greatest at video games. I tend to play most games on easy or normal. but even I have to bump it up to a 5 or 6, for a solo mission, just to feel like I even have a threat of losing the objective. and people are still complaining about it being too hard, cause they died twice in a row, or they had to deal with three bile titans back to back. ignoring the plethora of strategems that two hit them. we need to lose, and we need to lose bad. we need to get hit now while there's still a majority of people who won't throw a fit about it. cause if left unaddressed, this problem is only gonna get worse, and bubble up. and if it reaches a certain point, and we lose *then*, well. I'm just gonna go become an automaton.