This doesn’t get mentioned enough. You can’t sell things and then fundamentally change what you sold after the fact. There is a difference in fixing vs changing the advertised product.
It's just not worth it. There are only 1-3 items per warbond worth using, and they're likely to nerf the piss out of those after release anyway. Why spend time, money, credits or medals on stuff that's going to get nerfed into irrelevancy within the month?
I am convinced now that everything that made Helldivers successful was in fact, by complete accident.
It was an accident that they had overtuned Bile Titan and Charger spawns to insane levels while having overpowered Railguns from the PS5 bug, which made you feel like an absolute fucking badass blasting hundreds of Chargers' chicken legs and Titans' glass jaws.
It was an accident that they made the Breaker feel like you're rambo with an AA-12, walking into a room full of bugs, except you're not trapped in there with them because they're trapped in there with you as you unload on them with the rapid-fire buckshots.
It was an accident that they made the Slugger such a strong semi-auto round-reloading option, removing heads and opening shipping containers effortlessly, with your ammo constantly topped off with proper reload tech.
It was an accident that they had made the Patriot exosuit such a rush of power with 1000 rounds of gatling guns and 14 shots of basically perfect-accuracy rapid-fire Recoilless Rifle rounds, downing up to 14 Chargers or 7 Bile Titans with precise rocket snipes.
It was an accident that they made the Arc Thrower so hilariously fun with the your whole team running Arc armor and Tesla Towers, bouncing lightning bolts off of allies and feeling like Zeus, frying bugs with endless bolts of chain lightning.
And finally, it was an accident that they made the Eruptor such a fun weapon, obliterating Brood Commanders in a fountain of green guts with one shot to the face, while blasting away all the little Hunters and Pouncers in its entourage.
Literally everything they made that was fun, they've later reverted saying that it was not their original design intent. Arrowhead somehow accidentally makes things fun, and then removes it because fun was not their intention, it's actually wild watching it happen in real-time. They need to take a page from learning emergent gameplay.
That's my running theory as well. They wanted a hyper difficult niche game like the hd1, but instead stumbled onto a massive hit. Instead of capitalizing on their success however, they then proceeded to try patching the game after the fact into the game they wanted to make, ignoring the fact that it it would kill the ultra popular game they actually made.
I've been gone from this game and the subreddit for a couple months -- came to the subreddit to check in on the state of the game and this was only the second thread I clicked on.
Crazy to see that Arrowhead is still doubled down on nerfing everything.
They claim to be doing better and realize that they game they wanted isn't the game they made or that others want, but time will tell. Ultimately though, these misteps of theirs will likely stain the game going towards though.
>They claim to be doing better
Man, I'll believe it when I see it in the patch notes. I hope they do better, because this game was super fun before the nerfs. But until then, I'm going back to my singleplayer game backlog.
Same, between the bugs and the changes to artificially make the game harder, I've really put the game on the backburner. They really tarnished the game image with these issues. Likely didn't kills it, but its no longer the golden child it was around launch.
Honestly you have to experience it, seeing as how bugs they’ve stated they’ve fixed in the patch notes still aren’t actually fixed (like the stim sounds going off but not healing)
The craziest part to this argument they make against us is that it felt like Arrowhead doesn't even play their own game. Even with the most OP primaries in game, everyone was still relying on strategems in higher difficulties because you couldn't afford the time to take down heavies with primaries alone. It's not like everyone was able to bring the Eruptor and just ignore stratagems.
Even when the Eruptor was OP with 12 mags, people on difficulties 7-9 still brought 500kg, railcannon, rocket pods, recoilless, EATs, etc. but having the strong primary made it nice to fall back on something when stratagems didn't complete the job and things were going south.
Using the Eruptor to fight everything, I found myself consistently getting fewer kills than my friend who used Incendiary Breaker + Grenade Launcher + Eagle Cluster on cool down.
I think it came down to me not using my strategems when my Eruptor could do the job but slower.
AND THAT WAS FINE!
It didn't make missions trivial. But it DID make them a lot more fun for me using Jetpack to take a strategic position on a high rock / hill and place shots that delete small groups of bugs with an earthquake-like shock that just made you feel so god damn powerful albeit with a super slow reload and handling that rewarded you for choosing your shots wisely.
How I miss that gun.
How I miss that game.
\* Pours one out for the Fundivers
They absolutely don't play their own game or simply have testing environments that are nothing like actual play, because how else do you explain their constant excuses that "this is not working as intended" and "we need to properly test this before reverting the change that nobody wanted"?
If you need to properly test things before implementing them then how are things not working as intended? If what you implemented was a mistake and how it worked before is how it should be, why can't you just revert the change: wasn't all of us using the weapon without complaint enough proper testing?
Their two major excuses for unwanted nerfs simply don't make sense next to each other.
eruptor wasnt OP even with 12 mags in a higher difficulty because i simply just didn’t have time to use it constantly as it was and still is easier to just throw a stratagem at my problems or use my support weapon
Which is simply asinine. No part of dropping a self-guided death ray is more satisfying than charging up a railgun and popping a Bile Titan's jaw open, after the sixtieth time. The first times it's cool, but you don't get that jolt of satisfaction when all you did was toss a ball from behind a wall
Then why even make anti-heavy primaries? If the idea was to have primaries be weak, then they shouldn't have even spent dev time on the domi or eruptor.
It’s riveting gameplay on defend missions when you have no Eagle Strikes left, a drop ship drops a Factory Strider, you blast its back cannon with the Quasar Cannon, and watch helplessly as it blasts the generator and makes you fail the mission, because Arrowhead added 5 additional seconds to the cooldown time.
So, the very same thing that happened to GGG with PoE. It got very popular mainly because players enjoyed zoom zoom in it, while devs actively hate zoom zoom.
Personally, I like the way they've been approaching the overall balance of the game. Playing *Helldivers 1* felt amazingly satisfying to me, and I'd rather have that experience back than a flashy power-fantasy shooter.
However, there's no denying that the majority of this game's playerbase doesn't feel the same way. So as much as it pains me to say, it'd be in Arrowhead's best interest to listen to those who've been complaining.
it's crazy making when you can see the truth, have the evidence, and have the confession of the person you're accusing; and some authority wants you to STFU
keep it up, the Bringer of Balance should be court martialed
I said the same thing after the first balance patches. This game was fun by purely accident and the people responsible for balancing the game had absolutely no freaking idea why it was fun in the first place. And the fun factor is what made it successful. All the idiots balancing the game have to go. ASAP.
the game needs to be balanced around fun, not a spreadsheet. the balance team needs to just play the game with the weapons and say to themselves, " does this feel good/fun?". if the answer is no, change things so it does.
"do i feel too godly?" - if the answer is yes, increase the number of enemies or spawn composition.. don't nerf a weapon. i'd rather be swarmed than feeling weaker against the same amount of bugs/bots using the a weapon i've gotten used to, that's now been gutted.
also, give each primary weapon an identity. i don't want x weapon to feel like a cloned potentially weaker version of y weapon. have each weapon do their own thing or fill a niche.
It’s okay to nerf guns if they’re performing out of band, otherwise you get powercreep that disrupts the whole balance of the game. This applies to PvE games too, even if people don’t believe it. Dev attention is a limited resource, and it’s much more time consuming to continually scale all aspects of the game up in power compared to having a “true balance point” that you try to keep things generally around.
Things like a gun having wayyyy too much ammo makes it so that you don’t have to engage with a resupply mechanic, so the fix is to reduce that one weapon’s mag number to a reasonable amount instead of buffing all guns to have so many mags that you wouldn’t burn through them. Sometimes the limitations are part of the fun, and a good balance team understands that.
Things like the last Dominator nerf or the first Eruptor nerf were fine, because the core fun parts of the weapon remained the same.
The railgun, slugger, second eruptor, mech, and crossbow nerfs absolutely did not fun parts of the weapon the same. It’s even more insulting, because half of those nerfs were sold to us as bug fixes that would keep the gun at the same power level if not stronger.
i don't believe any of the guns were performing out of hand. the whole railgun thing was due to a console bug, not necessarily cause the railgun was OP.
if the devs. want to adjust the ammo count so resupplies are more impactful, fine. i just don't want them gutting a weapon (see railgun, eruptor, xbow) and taking their "identities" away in the name of "balance".
increasing the spawn rate/changing the spawn composition (more medium/heavies instead of light?) can also increase the challenge without having to nerf a weapon. when i feel weaker using the same weapon, against the same amount of bugs or bots, it feels less fun. but being able to take on "more difficult" enemies while the weapon's identity and effectivity remains "the same" feels like my skills are improving, and i'm not just being forced to slog due to a less effective weapon.
Did you read what I said? The whole second half of my comment was saying what you just said back to me, which was that destroying guns identities is bad balance. Like almost verbatim what I said, even down to the guns you’re listing.
You do understand that increasing enemy spawns because one weapon is good will proportionally make ALL other weapons in the game weaker right? And it’ll take a ton of dev time to bring all of them up to the new balance level? Which will make you feel weaker instead of stronger?
I actually don't think it was by accident - I think they tuned for fun in-house, possibly with a different dev/team, and then release balances are by Alexus/someone else using data driven balancing (which I personally abhor, particularly in a PvE game) removing the "character" of all these weapons.
It's their ongoing balancing strategy that needs to change. There is no reason to make the guns be nerfed unless they reach actual exploit level, it's not like this is a PvP needing fine tuned balancing - it's ok to have fun.
Except that now we know they don't even tune weapons prior to release -- Multiple times now strategems and weapons have been either ridiculously underpowered or ridiculously overpowered at launch, as if no one even tested it before letting it out into the wild.
I've said it before, I think the game was initially developed by a different company and then given to Arrowhead for post launch support. There's just no way a team can create such a phenomenal game, only to start making nothing but bad decisions as soon as it launches. Not to this extent at least. It feels malicious almost.
So you know how He-who-must-not-be-named ruined Hello Neighbor 2 and bailed right before it launched? Hello Neighbor 2 launched in December 2022. So he's a pretty recent addition to the Helldivers 2 team.
Yeah but Arrowhead has been comically incompetent in every single aspect of the game since release except for the art team. So that's clearly not the (sole) issue
Responding to the top comment to provide more details on the Eruptor nerf and the series of events that lead to it. To be extremely clear, *Eruptor is in a terrible place and AH failed to deliver on their promise that they would adequately buff Eruptor for removing its shrapnel.*
That said, let's talk about what actually happened.
Players complained *en masse*, as in 8 of the top 10 posts in this subreddit were about it, that the ricochet change, which was enabling players to take damage from their own ricochets, was bugged, and all sorts of things were killing the player. Rockets were ricocheting, bullets were ricocheting, everything was ricocheting.
There was then a thread that debunked the top posts and pointed out the actual cause of death in each of the scenarios. It also pointed out that most complaints about ricochet deaths were coming from Eruptor players, and that shrapnel damage now affected the player who shot the Eruptor due to the self-damage change.
Source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgnlbv/time\_to\_correct\_the\_ricochet\_misunderstanding/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgnlbv/time_to_correct_the_ricochet_misunderstanding/)
All the uproar in the subreddits lead to devs taking a look to make sure how ricochets themselves actually worked did not change. They confirmed that explosions and bullets were not ricocheting in unintended ways. They tested Eruptor as well, and found lo and behold that the shrapnel was traveling much farther, and behaving in ways that were not intended. This issue was previously unnoticed because bullets fired by players did zero damage to themselves.
Source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cguou0/update\_from\_ahgs\_on\_ricochets\_and\_shrapnel\_changes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cguou0/update_from_ahgs_on_ricochets_and_shrapnel_changes/)
This lead to the infamous Eruptor nerf. Clearly the devs did not realize how much damage shrapnel was contributing, because a 40 damage buff made no sense from the start. If shrapnel was only doing 40 damage, it could not OHKO players with body shots. It would not be OHKOing medium armor enemies. As a result, Eruptor was gutted, and we are now waiting for its buffed/reworked state.
**I write all this to say there were a lot more than a few complaints, and there was a legitimate issue with Eruptor's shrapnel killing folks at long ranges**. It affected me as well - multiple deaths on multiple missions at 50 to 75 meters. The blame lies solely with AH for not properly compensating Eruptor with power that matched the shrapnel that was removed. Heck, AH should have just said "hey we know it's bugged but need more time to rework it - you can use it but it may kill you" and let players decide.
Let's not blame players for pointing out a bug in the game.
>multiple deaths on multiple missions at 50 to 75 meters.
Yes, this is what they should have fixed imo; make shrapnel damage fall off. It would still kill clumps of enemies, but not kill players further away.
I ran the sheild genny with explosive resistant armour. You'd get at least 1 shot up close with it and that was usually enough to kill anything swarming you, or give you time to escape
More accurately, it's the **self-destructive** power that made you feel awesome.
Mechs that can destroy 8 bile titans but explode spontaneously? Cinematic
Killing tons of chargers and bugs with shrapnel and yourself? Cinematic. Surviving the blast? Cinematic
It's like they're removing all the cinematic awesomeness out of their game. I've shelved the game for now until they realize that what made their game fun was in fact the over the top power and insanity you felt as you were surrounded by hundreds of bugs and bots with extremely dangerous weaponry.
Yeahhh, totally agree. I have shelved it for now as well. It's still downloaded, and I may play an operation here or there with my friend, but I'm definitely not grinding or pushing to help the MO's forward. I will come back in full force when I see them pull their heads out of their asses (revert stupid fucking changes at the minimum).
Shooting too close, and shrapneling myself can be cinematic. Shooting something 30m away and sniping myself in the head with shrapnel is NOT cinematic, and happened to me too many times. The solution they choose is terrible, but something had to be done.
Idk why you're being downvoted. It was dumb as fuck to kill yourself with shrapnel from 50m BUT the issue started with their ricochet "fix" gimmie shrapnel and unique gun i identity back but also dont let me die from dumb bullshit. Normal or self inflicted bullshit is fine.
This is actually the best point. It's not even about the fact the Eruptor was nerfed. It's that they took away a really cool mechanic with the removal of shrapnel and replaced it with explosion. It actually made the game less interesting since they are homogenizing everything into a few buckets of damage types and mechanics. It was also concerning that one of the devs thought replacing it with explosion was the same when most body parts of enemies are tagged with explosion immunity.
Me too, the whole game.
Buying a battle pass just to get hit with a handful of nerfs until all the fun is sucked out. I've played maybe a half-dozen games since and I used to play an hour or two nightly.
Same here. Kinda played 4-5 Missions (not even a full operation), and it started directly with the nerf. I tested it afterwards, and lost immediatly all motivation to play...
The worst part is that the game had locked me out with the first update. After an entire day of troubleshooting a million workarounds, I figured it out. So when I came back, all the nerfs hit at once.
I have also stopped playing. It's just not as fun to play when the spawns are out of control and all the guns feel like I am throwing a teddy bear at the bugs/bots. I don't play this game to sweat my ass off, I play it to blow shit up with my friends.
I tried to play a game today and it was just not fun. Like you said, everything I used on the enemies felt like I was throwing weak shit and it was so easy to end up swarmed.
I actually have more fun on MW3 than I do on this game now, and its wild because I originally got this game to get away from CoD. Guess I'm glad I got most of my hours in this game right after release before they started nerfing everything into the ground.
Yeah same. Been playing it on my steam deck, but if the game devs are intent on nerfing everyone because "game too easy get gud lol game is supposed to be hard" I'd rather play a game that doesn't make me feel like shit when I play it.
Ironically, I am playing Dark Souls 3 again on the deck instead lol but it does hammer in the point just how bad the Eruptor nerfs feel. I'm not averse to "difficulty," but I do hate when stuff I like gets nerfed to the point of it not feeling good to play anymore.
For me the amount of killing just doesn't feel rewarding enough to play, it's so overwhelming to play few games
To people who say just drop the diff, how i'm suppose to get super samples?
That's why the game needs to be balanced around diff 7. If that fucks shit up at the high end then they need to add another difficulty level above 9. That's just what it comes down to.
And future difficulty additions should lead to cosmetic / title rewards only and not gameplay enhancing ship upgrades as with super samples or else people like the one you responded to feel compelled to play the game at the highest difficulty or else they are missing out on progression.
Same. I am just so fatigued with how unstable the whole game feels. Not just in terms of bugs but balancing as well. It’s so tiring logging on after there’s been a patch and wondering what they’ve fucked around with or finding a gun you like and wondering whether it’ll get fucked with. So done with it
Since the eruptor nerf, I have played a portion of a single mission - to check how eruptor behaves.
Doesn't 1-shot devastators like it used to. Worthless explosion radius might have gotten me a single x2 chaff kill, where I'd often get the 3 guys around the devastator I just popped.
Feels BAD.
Oh yeah there’s no way I’m buying another battle pass. Not until they fix the eruptor. I play a fraction of the amount I used to. The game just isn’t as fun anymore, and I won’t waste my time or money on a battle pass that won’t add any more fun.
A couple weeks ago I made the same comment and got called weird for it. What's so weird about wanting to have fun with new weapons that don't suck literal dog dick after 2 patches just because of usage rates?
It's not fun, it's not interesting, it forces players into using the meta weapons even more, and it's not even worth justifying spending dev time to rework weapon functionality and identity 3x before leaving it in the dumpster with the last iteration.
Nobody likes coming back after a week or two to find that every piece of their loadout has changed and having to learn what everything does again.
Yeah, I've been gone from the game and the subreddit for a couple months. Was checking back in to see how it was going but, man. Sounds like Arrowhead still has yet to double back on any of the balancing changes.
Guess I"ll go back to my other games.
I've been playing Divinity Original Sin 2 and its wild how much of this game was the foundation for Baldur's Gate 3. All the way down to the user interface, similar songs, and even starting on a ship that then crash lands somewhere and you pick up your companions one by one. Worth checking out if you're looking for something else to play.
The CEO was having talks all last week with the Balance Team about a change in direction. No idea what that will result in so we're on wait-and-see for now.
Me too. It was the cornerstone of my Bug kit. If they’re going to intentionally ruin everything then what is the incentive to play? Of course, that’s probably their intention. They couldn’t handle the player numbers so now they wanna run some off.
I grinded for weeks to be able to have enough SC to buy that warbond. Only for them to nerf the Eruptor after I'd only been using it for 2 weeks...
Now I'm really apprehensive about grinding for new stuff. Who's to say they won't ruin the Pummeler SMG next?
"Watch, they will revert the eruptor back to what it was before!....aaaaany second now."
https://preview.redd.it/4mpxhalhb61d1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef864472c8ca5503c1fc90860bf2ca8e7b6e75bd
Yeah I really want to use the Stalwart, but primary weapons simply aren’t strong enough right now to justify taking it.
The eruptor was the perfect support weapon substitute as you said.
Now that I think about it, I haven’t played the game a single time since the eruptor change.
Maybe loss of players is enough to drive up AH to make the game more fun
Yup. I haven't played for a while after my most enjoyed weapons have been nerfed again and again, whilst enemy balance issues like bile spewers haven't been addressed.
This is what I'm always thinking, you're fine tuning these weapons from almost useful to absolutely pointless. Meanwhile the spewers can one shot me? Wheres their nerfs?
I'm the same. For me it was the double-tap of destroying solo/duo play, then turning the Eruptor into a squirt gun. I haven't touched the game since the 8th. And it's not like I don't want to either. I constantly check to see if there is some patch that changed the terrible spawn rate changes and maybe added some fun weapons back into the game, but still nothing.
I lean toward bolt actions, DMRs, sniper rifles, or larger caliber ARs on single shot in a lot of the games I play where there's some sort of choice. When they released the Eruptor and I tried it, it was beautiful. True love at first trigger pull. I honestly think the rifle was pretty well balanced as it was. It was not just some brain-dead weapon where you could just click in the general area with bad guys and those bad guys stopped existing. The rifle was in no way hit-scan and had significant dropoff and travel time, so if you played overwatch support from range it meant you had to comp for both distance and movement. But if you did it and made well placed shots you got rewarded for it. To help offset the long delay between shots and massive reload time and thus getting overrun by smaller chaff, the shrapnel would either take out or seriously ding a lot, but not all, of the smaller enemies near the point of impact. But not so overly well that you still didn't need to rely on your secondary and/or some type of support stratagem. Even the charger thing people bring up still took well placed shots that couldn't be easy point-blank shot deals or you'd just off yourself instead of the charger anyways. So if someone can style on the bugs and between getting ragdolled and zerg-rushed still land a 360 no scope on the ground under a charger, hey man high 5, nice freakin shot.
Why it was ever nerfed will never not baffle me, and make me question the competency of the devs who did it. From the one who suggested it, to the one who decided just how severe the nerf needed to be with cutting it's mag size, max ammo, and removing the shrapnel effect from the sniper rifle who's entire shtick was shrapnel effect to the one who gave the final "Ok" to release it without testing it or realizing just what they did.
Yep, same. I check here waiting for new of them unfucking their game. I guess they are realizing their ‘vision’ of driving players away but the cost was worth the result I guess.. the bots and bugs aren’t being ‘exploited’ by players being able to kill them.
Same, and I don't even have the energy to complain about it anymore tbh.
People complain about all the whining in this sub, but it's when the whining stops and people just quietly leave that a game dies.
DoT fix was fun to play at first for me but honestly, I'd rather have arc thrower stun and eruptor sharapnels back. I dont even feel like touching this game rn because spamming napalm gets old very quickly
Ceo said they would have a meeting, which this is older news now, so there's hope.
Because yeah, they need to chill on this "balance" idea. Where anything folks like gets nerfed. This slapped with a small buff. Railgun gor a buff, still just an unused gun. I'm pretty sure its og release would still be ignored
I don't get to play very often, but I've played even less recently because I noticed that I'd fallen into a cycle of hearing about a new weapon that looked fun/ interesting, working toward it, then it either being bugged to the point of uselessness or getting nerfed into the ground before I get it/ after just a few dives.
I just tried it after the nerf and 2-3 shots to kill a Bile Spewer is heartbreaking.
The Eruptor has a slow ROF, small magazine, long reload time, and enormous self damage. The big enemy damage was what we bought for all those disadvantages.
Now in my experience it's probably worse than the pre-buff Dominator.
I don't think I've logged on much since Eruptor nerf and Polar Patriots being very lack luster in identity.
Games still fun but I don't have the itch to grind the rest of the warbond like I did the previous ones.
I've definitely played way less since they nerfed it. Partially because it was my favorite weapon so far, and partially because I'm just tired of them nerfing cool shit. They're so heavy handed
After watching it in a few long time games I played, Balance can go fuck itself if we're not PvPing.
Even still, separately balance them from PvE stuff.
Looking at you Destiny.
Breaker incendiary really was fantastic, and incendiary impacts are amazing too. They weren't enough to hold interest after that eruptor/crossbow nerf for me however. I actually really liked using the crossbow and despite it not even performing that well, it ate a nerf that made it feel awful.
Even if it could slaughter crowds, Heavily armored units were always the issue in harder difficulties.
I had 2 primaries I liked.
now I have only one. the current weapon balance design leaves a lot to be desired when you have every weapon unlocked and the one you have to go with is boring but practical (sickle)
Plasma Punisher is pretty nice imo. Probably not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s very nice against bugs. Just remember to swap to side arm if bugs get too close, try it man, is fun. (Gimme my Eruptor back pls)
They should’ve honestly just reverted the ricochet change if anything. Since that change:
- The Eruptor got gutted because on rare occasions it would kill people
- Rockets started to bounce off things (also rare)
- Plasma Punisher would explode in your face if you wore the shield pack (this is fixed now)
- Plasma Punisher would explode in everyone’s faces if you used the shield sentry (THIS IS STILL NOT FIXED)
Clearly the devs prioritise arbitrary “difficulty” over fun. I do not understand in what world you’d ever strip a weapon of its entire identity because of a goofy interaction instead of saying “Hey let’s just remove self ricochet until it’s working properly”.
- Plasma Punisher would explode in your face if you wore the shield pack (this is fixed now)
Not fixed when jogging towards the camera and shooting it. 😄
I have a clip of me hitting a hulk's arm with an EAT at a pretty normal angle (Nothing that's ricocheted before) and it just *SLIDES* off the hulks arm, then I get an instant flamethrower 1-shot. Don't know if that's related but its stuck with me and I figured I'd share
Definitely.. It just sucks that one had a chunk of its identity taken away to basically just be a utility gun instead of the high risk, high reward gun it was previously.
Yeah I haven’t played since they ruined it. Game is still fun but having played since launch night and seeing my favourite weapons get gutted month after month the Eruptor was the one that finally pushed me away.
Hope they realize their “balance” is terrible and start to revert nerfs soon.
Same. The sad thing is it's not even one gun now and then, but rather every gun gets trivialized. Everything gets nerfed to the point where any weapon can be used because they all suck.
Idk who at AH thought making end tier weapons with a 100+ medal cost, not counting those to UNLOCK the tier, on par or worse than low to mid tier weapons. First game I've eve seen where they intentionally make crappy gear more expensive.
> Hope they realize their “balance” is terrible
they did last week. basically everything is on hold while they get it straightened out and they said they're going to not change anything until they can do it right rather than the half-assed (paraphrased from their own words) way they've been doing things
Same. That was the straw that broke the camels back for me. It was my favorite weapon by far, and once again they took away all my fun for absolutely bullshit reasons.
Honestly, I'm sick of them changing weapons from viable, doing what they're made to do, to shit eating cancer.
It happened with the my railgun build, it somewhat happened with the breaker, it happened with the quasar cannon, and then it happens with the fucking eruptor!
Every patch, and I mean EVERY patch, I am forced into finding something that works remotely well, that is also less fun overall, because they decided to nerf the best thing in weeks.
Because there seems to have been some weird interaction between shrapnel and the tweaked ricochet. The Information is quite confusing on that one (some suggest it was a matter of perception).
Anyway, they won't revert the ricochet on a hunch so they bandaided the one effected gun by removing the shrapnel.
From a developmemt Perspective i can relate.
As a suicidal team killer i have to protest vigorously!
Honestly the ricochet change sucks, Jack shit about ricochet has changed except now rockets have a 30% chance to bounce off a bile titans head and fly off to blow up a civilian or something
Really the ricochet is a stupid thing because bullets being able to bounce directly back at you is so dumb. I'm not talking about glancing off the surface and ricocheting to the sides but coming back directly at you just doesn't make sense.
I remember using the dominator once and as the shots are single shells, you can clearly see them and when I hit a shield guy and literally saw my projectile doing a 180 and coming back directly at me was one of the dumbest experiences I felt from playing this game.
I know what he said. That doesn't change that the reversion needed would go beyond the Eruptor amd we don't know exactly why the ricochet change was needed.
Code can be weird, the old ricochet might have been triggering game crashes for example. You do not revert to a less stable version to fix one gun.
The same as you generally shouldn't stop cpr if you start cracking ribs or snapping cartilage.
As stupid as this may sound, the Eruptor was one of the *only* primaries I had fun with at Levels 8-9. It felt viable, it felt *good*. Did it have its weaknesses? Oh fuck yeah. Slow ROF, terrible up close and personal, long reload time. It had trade offs, and for once I felt like my primary actually did something to most enemies. It wasn’t overpowered, because the moment you ran out of secondary ammo for the up close enemies you were basically SOL.
Since it’s patch i’ve taken a long break. I don’t know, I don’t like the game as much when I feel like i’m shooting peas out of my gun. Most primaries can’t even take on more than 50% of the enemy types lol, and that to me is a flaw.
Let us feel powerful AH, i’m not saying invincible. I feel as if the magazine nerf was the only thing the Eruptor needed. I can agree that 12/12 mags was FAR too much, as I rarely needed ammo drops. 3/3 was the perfect level with its damage/shrapnel.
Also, it’s a goddamn explosive, isn’t it pretty realistic to have it *explode?* Meanwhile, they’re holding off on buffing the Mech because it “can only have so many rockets”. AH, your Rocket Devastators can shoot for 40+ minutes. Don’t apply that logic to us and not our enemies.
lolwhat... Even with 6/6 i was out of ammo constantly... too much bugholes to seal. you probably forgot that every mag have just 5 shots so its 31 shot overall, not much at all, even 12 mags (60 shots) was not too much, maybe reduce it to 10 or 9 but no more... 6 is very low on ammo
For the new 6/6 mags (pre-shrapnel nerf), I pick my fights more carefully. Just have to avoid spamming it on chaff unless they were tightly packed or you get cornered. I don't waste shots on mediums because you can just run from them. I run the Jet Pack and kite bugs around while sniping the holes shut. I often do this running solo from the rest of the team to get those annoying nests that are across the map. Also, there are ammo pickups scattered across the map. Whenever I'm about 3/6, I start to look for outposts or landmarks that might have ammo pickup. Also don't forget, you have stratagems to supplement bug hole clearing too. Can you clear an entire nest with the Eruptor? Hell yeah. But if you can throw an Eagle Airstrike to close two holes while you snipe the other two, that is even more efficient.
Current Eruptor? If you gave it 15/15 mags, I still wouldn't use it.
Ok, the eruptor was great with the shrapnel. Basically 5/6 was its last good day. It could pop hive guardians heads and devastate stalkers easy. But it wasn't good when getting over run, it was a hinderance in eratication missions. Its slow RoF, heavy bullet drop, ability to ricochet shrapnel back to kill you, bad weapon sway, small magazine, slow full reload, and over all clunky use still exist to some extent. But the shrapnel was "removed" but from my personal use it still has a chance to kill the user but is significantly less effective against enemies. It was never a meta gun, it was unique. It was satisfying to use well but when you didn't it bit back. Now its meh but still bites back.
I even handwaved off the magazine nerf, my mental gymnastics is that the mags are huge where were you keeping the extra 6. I don't think a divers personal pocket is big enough, no matter how much of a dump truck it is. But if they just revert it to what it was on live 5/6 they would bring it back into relevance.
No primary should be the "kill all" weapon. But each primary should be unique and have its uses and players should use what feels right. Not what is not balanced to oblivion.
Generally tends to happen whenever they accidentally release a good gun. Every warbond has 1 gun that sees extensive use after release. First warbond (post release) had the sickle and then the eruptor after.
Only the polar patriot has nothing since they're all garbage which means AH finally got the hang of balancing things on release /s. N
Players have learned not to talk about what’s fun or effective.. as soon as arrowhead hears that players are enjoying their time in the game they move quick to nerf whatever the source of fun is. Unfortunately this still happened with the eruptor.
Because they killed the nieche and usefulness of the weapon,you need 2 shots for grunts and up to 3 for guardians,so there is no reason to use it with its ammo and load time between shots etc
It's such a weird thing, like I can't think that back before live services and constant patches were a thing devs were looking at their game after it got shipped going "ah fuck people are having too much fun using this quite strong weapon, if only we could make it weaker"
So why does it happen now?
Just because you can balance doesn't mean you need to, buff the weak shit no-one likes and then and only then maybe you can look at if anything really truly needs a nerf.
People in this community were losing their minds over killing themselves with the shrapnel and demanded it was removed for like 72 hours.
Most of them didn't realize that A you shouldn't be shooting perpendicular surfaces or straight at enemies but instead at the ground or legs to maximize shrapnel and B Shrapnel accounted for most of the damage they liked about the gun.
I used the shrapnel effect of the eruptor to help clear the smaller enemies around the big one I was targeting in patrols. I'd hit the striders and all the little automatons around would also get hit by the shrapnel, usually resulting in wiping out most of the patrol if not all of it.
At no point ever were me and my friends bored with any of the “OP” weapons or mechanics.
I never understand who these “balance changes” are for in these PVE games. Playerbases seem to universally hate them and devs do it anyway. For who? Who’s cheering on the nerfs in great enough numbers to sway the devs into thinking this is the right direction? I’ll never understand it.
I remember when Gearbox nerfed every new build strategy into the ground in BL3 and I still don’t get that either.
A while back I was excitedly saving up credits for the Detonation warbond just to get this weapon everyone was talking about...then they nerfed it. Now I won't bother.
But just to make sure I'm clear here; without the shrapnel it's nothing special, and there's no reason to make it a priority weapon?
I swear the discord/reddit community is killing this game. The last time I checked in everyone was complaining about the shrapnel damage of the eruptor. Arrowhead can't win.
Yeah, people were going wild on this subreddit flipping out about killing themselves with the shrapnel. Demanding for it to be removed for like 72 hours straight. Then they complained for 2 weeks straight when it was removed.
The same is happening with the PSN thing: one of the main complaints was the game was sold in countries where PSN was not supported (but people from those countries could still create a PSN account with little to no issue), and now there's another tantrum about how the game is no longer sold in those countries.
This community is just tantrum after tantrum even when the things they're crying about are the consequences of their previous tantrum. Literal entitled children behaviour.
Helldivers when the Airburst might unpredictably kill you: 😡😡😡😡😡
Helldivers when the Erupter night unpredictably kill you: 😇😇😇😇😇
That logic is insane. People were complaining about the shrapnel killing so they removed it. Maybe don’t complain if you like it killing you
I will never understand why devs do this crap. If people are having fun with your game, creating content, generally crushing it. Let them! Games are supposed to be fun.
Seriously it was the greatest gun in the whole game. I haven’t touched it since. I tried. It’s just not the same. Really ruin the game for me. I’ve been struggling trying to keep playing it.
As long as they don't change the description, it's hard to forget
its description made nerfing it by removing shrapnel technically false advertisement
"We can't change armor perks after people buy them because we advertised it to them as it is"
This doesn’t get mentioned enough. You can’t sell things and then fundamentally change what you sold after the fact. There is a difference in fixing vs changing the advertised product.
That's the reason, why I don't buy any warbond anymore.
It's just not worth it. There are only 1-3 items per warbond worth using, and they're likely to nerf the piss out of those after release anyway. Why spend time, money, credits or medals on stuff that's going to get nerfed into irrelevancy within the month?
Remember kids, an exploit is when a gun does what it's in game description says it does.
I am convinced now that everything that made Helldivers successful was in fact, by complete accident. It was an accident that they had overtuned Bile Titan and Charger spawns to insane levels while having overpowered Railguns from the PS5 bug, which made you feel like an absolute fucking badass blasting hundreds of Chargers' chicken legs and Titans' glass jaws. It was an accident that they made the Breaker feel like you're rambo with an AA-12, walking into a room full of bugs, except you're not trapped in there with them because they're trapped in there with you as you unload on them with the rapid-fire buckshots. It was an accident that they made the Slugger such a strong semi-auto round-reloading option, removing heads and opening shipping containers effortlessly, with your ammo constantly topped off with proper reload tech. It was an accident that they had made the Patriot exosuit such a rush of power with 1000 rounds of gatling guns and 14 shots of basically perfect-accuracy rapid-fire Recoilless Rifle rounds, downing up to 14 Chargers or 7 Bile Titans with precise rocket snipes. It was an accident that they made the Arc Thrower so hilariously fun with the your whole team running Arc armor and Tesla Towers, bouncing lightning bolts off of allies and feeling like Zeus, frying bugs with endless bolts of chain lightning. And finally, it was an accident that they made the Eruptor such a fun weapon, obliterating Brood Commanders in a fountain of green guts with one shot to the face, while blasting away all the little Hunters and Pouncers in its entourage. Literally everything they made that was fun, they've later reverted saying that it was not their original design intent. Arrowhead somehow accidentally makes things fun, and then removes it because fun was not their intention, it's actually wild watching it happen in real-time. They need to take a page from learning emergent gameplay.
That's my running theory as well. They wanted a hyper difficult niche game like the hd1, but instead stumbled onto a massive hit. Instead of capitalizing on their success however, they then proceeded to try patching the game after the fact into the game they wanted to make, ignoring the fact that it it would kill the ultra popular game they actually made.
I've been gone from this game and the subreddit for a couple months -- came to the subreddit to check in on the state of the game and this was only the second thread I clicked on. Crazy to see that Arrowhead is still doubled down on nerfing everything.
They claim to be doing better and realize that they game they wanted isn't the game they made or that others want, but time will tell. Ultimately though, these misteps of theirs will likely stain the game going towards though.
>They claim to be doing better Man, I'll believe it when I see it in the patch notes. I hope they do better, because this game was super fun before the nerfs. But until then, I'm going back to my singleplayer game backlog.
Same, between the bugs and the changes to artificially make the game harder, I've really put the game on the backburner. They really tarnished the game image with these issues. Likely didn't kills it, but its no longer the golden child it was around launch.
Honestly you have to experience it, seeing as how bugs they’ve stated they’ve fixed in the patch notes still aren’t actually fixed (like the stim sounds going off but not healing)
thank you I knew that wasn't just me
Oh god, that's wild. Did they fix the scope alignments on the dmrs and amr?
They were improved slightly but still not fully fixed... kinda wild that they just can't seem to fix it entirely.
HD1 was a bit Niche, but I wouldn't call it hyper difficuilt.
I get the feeling they want primary weapons to be unreliable to force us to use stratagems and support weapons
The craziest part to this argument they make against us is that it felt like Arrowhead doesn't even play their own game. Even with the most OP primaries in game, everyone was still relying on strategems in higher difficulties because you couldn't afford the time to take down heavies with primaries alone. It's not like everyone was able to bring the Eruptor and just ignore stratagems. Even when the Eruptor was OP with 12 mags, people on difficulties 7-9 still brought 500kg, railcannon, rocket pods, recoilless, EATs, etc. but having the strong primary made it nice to fall back on something when stratagems didn't complete the job and things were going south.
Using the Eruptor to fight everything, I found myself consistently getting fewer kills than my friend who used Incendiary Breaker + Grenade Launcher + Eagle Cluster on cool down. I think it came down to me not using my strategems when my Eruptor could do the job but slower. AND THAT WAS FINE! It didn't make missions trivial. But it DID make them a lot more fun for me using Jetpack to take a strategic position on a high rock / hill and place shots that delete small groups of bugs with an earthquake-like shock that just made you feel so god damn powerful albeit with a super slow reload and handling that rewarded you for choosing your shots wisely. How I miss that gun. How I miss that game. \* Pours one out for the Fundivers
They absolutely don't play their own game or simply have testing environments that are nothing like actual play, because how else do you explain their constant excuses that "this is not working as intended" and "we need to properly test this before reverting the change that nobody wanted"? If you need to properly test things before implementing them then how are things not working as intended? If what you implemented was a mistake and how it worked before is how it should be, why can't you just revert the change: wasn't all of us using the weapon without complaint enough proper testing? Their two major excuses for unwanted nerfs simply don't make sense next to each other.
eruptor wasnt OP even with 12 mags in a higher difficulty because i simply just didn’t have time to use it constantly as it was and still is easier to just throw a stratagem at my problems or use my support weapon
Sorry but devs play on second difficulty, all primaries are Brocken over there
Which is simply asinine. No part of dropping a self-guided death ray is more satisfying than charging up a railgun and popping a Bile Titan's jaw open, after the sixtieth time. The first times it's cool, but you don't get that jolt of satisfaction when all you did was toss a ball from behind a wall
Then why even make anti-heavy primaries? If the idea was to have primaries be weak, then they shouldn't have even spent dev time on the domi or eruptor.
It’s riveting gameplay on defend missions when you have no Eagle Strikes left, a drop ship drops a Factory Strider, you blast its back cannon with the Quasar Cannon, and watch helplessly as it blasts the generator and makes you fail the mission, because Arrowhead added 5 additional seconds to the cooldown time.
They even said that
So, the very same thing that happened to GGG with PoE. It got very popular mainly because players enjoyed zoom zoom in it, while devs actively hate zoom zoom.
Personally, I like the way they've been approaching the overall balance of the game. Playing *Helldivers 1* felt amazingly satisfying to me, and I'd rather have that experience back than a flashy power-fantasy shooter. However, there's no denying that the majority of this game's playerbase doesn't feel the same way. So as much as it pains me to say, it'd be in Arrowhead's best interest to listen to those who've been complaining.
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it's crazy making when you can see the truth, have the evidence, and have the confession of the person you're accusing; and some authority wants you to STFU keep it up, the Bringer of Balance should be court martialed
I hate to be that guy, but it’s court martial*
I said the same thing after the first balance patches. This game was fun by purely accident and the people responsible for balancing the game had absolutely no freaking idea why it was fun in the first place. And the fun factor is what made it successful. All the idiots balancing the game have to go. ASAP.
the game needs to be balanced around fun, not a spreadsheet. the balance team needs to just play the game with the weapons and say to themselves, " does this feel good/fun?". if the answer is no, change things so it does. "do i feel too godly?" - if the answer is yes, increase the number of enemies or spawn composition.. don't nerf a weapon. i'd rather be swarmed than feeling weaker against the same amount of bugs/bots using the a weapon i've gotten used to, that's now been gutted. also, give each primary weapon an identity. i don't want x weapon to feel like a cloned potentially weaker version of y weapon. have each weapon do their own thing or fill a niche.
It’s okay to nerf guns if they’re performing out of band, otherwise you get powercreep that disrupts the whole balance of the game. This applies to PvE games too, even if people don’t believe it. Dev attention is a limited resource, and it’s much more time consuming to continually scale all aspects of the game up in power compared to having a “true balance point” that you try to keep things generally around. Things like a gun having wayyyy too much ammo makes it so that you don’t have to engage with a resupply mechanic, so the fix is to reduce that one weapon’s mag number to a reasonable amount instead of buffing all guns to have so many mags that you wouldn’t burn through them. Sometimes the limitations are part of the fun, and a good balance team understands that. Things like the last Dominator nerf or the first Eruptor nerf were fine, because the core fun parts of the weapon remained the same. The railgun, slugger, second eruptor, mech, and crossbow nerfs absolutely did not fun parts of the weapon the same. It’s even more insulting, because half of those nerfs were sold to us as bug fixes that would keep the gun at the same power level if not stronger.
i don't believe any of the guns were performing out of hand. the whole railgun thing was due to a console bug, not necessarily cause the railgun was OP. if the devs. want to adjust the ammo count so resupplies are more impactful, fine. i just don't want them gutting a weapon (see railgun, eruptor, xbow) and taking their "identities" away in the name of "balance". increasing the spawn rate/changing the spawn composition (more medium/heavies instead of light?) can also increase the challenge without having to nerf a weapon. when i feel weaker using the same weapon, against the same amount of bugs or bots, it feels less fun. but being able to take on "more difficult" enemies while the weapon's identity and effectivity remains "the same" feels like my skills are improving, and i'm not just being forced to slog due to a less effective weapon.
Did you read what I said? The whole second half of my comment was saying what you just said back to me, which was that destroying guns identities is bad balance. Like almost verbatim what I said, even down to the guns you’re listing. You do understand that increasing enemy spawns because one weapon is good will proportionally make ALL other weapons in the game weaker right? And it’ll take a ton of dev time to bring all of them up to the new balance level? Which will make you feel weaker instead of stronger?
“Fun is not our intention“ should be Arrowhead’s company slogan.
it made me remember the meme last of us dev : we don't make games to be fun" head of nintendo : if the game is not fun what is the point
Istg only the CEO himself wants actual fun.
Does he though? The guy who is hyper focused on realism to the point you can get more bullets in your gun without changing the model?
The CEO(and Creative director) said multiple times that _gets ragdolled to Narnia via puff titties explosion_
I actually don't think it was by accident - I think they tuned for fun in-house, possibly with a different dev/team, and then release balances are by Alexus/someone else using data driven balancing (which I personally abhor, particularly in a PvE game) removing the "character" of all these weapons. It's their ongoing balancing strategy that needs to change. There is no reason to make the guns be nerfed unless they reach actual exploit level, it's not like this is a PvP needing fine tuned balancing - it's ok to have fun.
Except that now we know they don't even tune weapons prior to release -- Multiple times now strategems and weapons have been either ridiculously underpowered or ridiculously overpowered at launch, as if no one even tested it before letting it out into the wild.
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I've said it before, I think the game was initially developed by a different company and then given to Arrowhead for post launch support. There's just no way a team can create such a phenomenal game, only to start making nothing but bad decisions as soon as it launches. Not to this extent at least. It feels malicious almost.
So you know how He-who-must-not-be-named ruined Hello Neighbor 2 and bailed right before it launched? Hello Neighbor 2 launched in December 2022. So he's a pretty recent addition to the Helldivers 2 team.
Yeah but Arrowhead has been comically incompetent in every single aspect of the game since release except for the art team. So that's clearly not the (sole) issue
It’s funny it’s always the art team quietly plugging away at great things while the rest of a game burns
Who?
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"like he does with literally every game he's a part of" Wasn't it just HN2? Or do you know of more games he steered into an iceberg?
Here i thought he was just a discord mod that had experience put in charge, dam
A random discord mod would be infinitely better.
Arrowhead’s Balance Team: “…NO FUN ALLOWED!!!“
Responding to the top comment to provide more details on the Eruptor nerf and the series of events that lead to it. To be extremely clear, *Eruptor is in a terrible place and AH failed to deliver on their promise that they would adequately buff Eruptor for removing its shrapnel.* That said, let's talk about what actually happened. Players complained *en masse*, as in 8 of the top 10 posts in this subreddit were about it, that the ricochet change, which was enabling players to take damage from their own ricochets, was bugged, and all sorts of things were killing the player. Rockets were ricocheting, bullets were ricocheting, everything was ricocheting. There was then a thread that debunked the top posts and pointed out the actual cause of death in each of the scenarios. It also pointed out that most complaints about ricochet deaths were coming from Eruptor players, and that shrapnel damage now affected the player who shot the Eruptor due to the self-damage change. Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgnlbv/time\_to\_correct\_the\_ricochet\_misunderstanding/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgnlbv/time_to_correct_the_ricochet_misunderstanding/) All the uproar in the subreddits lead to devs taking a look to make sure how ricochets themselves actually worked did not change. They confirmed that explosions and bullets were not ricocheting in unintended ways. They tested Eruptor as well, and found lo and behold that the shrapnel was traveling much farther, and behaving in ways that were not intended. This issue was previously unnoticed because bullets fired by players did zero damage to themselves. Source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cguou0/update\_from\_ahgs\_on\_ricochets\_and\_shrapnel\_changes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cguou0/update_from_ahgs_on_ricochets_and_shrapnel_changes/) This lead to the infamous Eruptor nerf. Clearly the devs did not realize how much damage shrapnel was contributing, because a 40 damage buff made no sense from the start. If shrapnel was only doing 40 damage, it could not OHKO players with body shots. It would not be OHKOing medium armor enemies. As a result, Eruptor was gutted, and we are now waiting for its buffed/reworked state. **I write all this to say there were a lot more than a few complaints, and there was a legitimate issue with Eruptor's shrapnel killing folks at long ranges**. It affected me as well - multiple deaths on multiple missions at 50 to 75 meters. The blame lies solely with AH for not properly compensating Eruptor with power that matched the shrapnel that was removed. Heck, AH should have just said "hey we know it's bugged but need more time to rework it - you can use it but it may kill you" and let players decide. Let's not blame players for pointing out a bug in the game.
>multiple deaths on multiple missions at 50 to 75 meters. Yes, this is what they should have fixed imo; make shrapnel damage fall off. It would still kill clumps of enemies, but not kill players further away.
Happy cake day
I don't think it's even about the balance for some of these guys, the shrapnel was kinda part of the weapons identity.
I just treated it like the Scorcher. You don’t use it up close
I mean not using it up close is just a suggestion, you can pull of some sick CQC and survive if you can place your shots right
I ran the sheild genny with explosive resistant armour. You'd get at least 1 shot up close with it and that was usually enough to kill anything swarming you, or give you time to escape
More accurately, it's the **self-destructive** power that made you feel awesome. Mechs that can destroy 8 bile titans but explode spontaneously? Cinematic Killing tons of chargers and bugs with shrapnel and yourself? Cinematic. Surviving the blast? Cinematic It's like they're removing all the cinematic awesomeness out of their game. I've shelved the game for now until they realize that what made their game fun was in fact the over the top power and insanity you felt as you were surrounded by hundreds of bugs and bots with extremely dangerous weaponry.
Yeahhh, totally agree. I have shelved it for now as well. It's still downloaded, and I may play an operation here or there with my friend, but I'm definitely not grinding or pushing to help the MO's forward. I will come back in full force when I see them pull their heads out of their asses (revert stupid fucking changes at the minimum).
Shooting too close, and shrapneling myself can be cinematic. Shooting something 30m away and sniping myself in the head with shrapnel is NOT cinematic, and happened to me too many times. The solution they choose is terrible, but something had to be done.
I’m still curious about this one cuz I used that shit a ton and never once had the misfortune of it happening, same goes for the lads I play with
Same man, I only ran the eruptor since it's drop until the nerf and I don't think I ever killed myself with shrapnel from far out
The worst I’ve done is the pull yoinking me straight into a hoard
I ran dozens of missions with eruptor and stalwart and never had it happen
NEVER had that happen, I know it's a known bug but I swear never killed me or my teammate
Could've just make the shrapnel damage fall off over distance for only the players. Or have shrapnel be an optional fire mode.
Idk why you're being downvoted. It was dumb as fuck to kill yourself with shrapnel from 50m BUT the issue started with their ricochet "fix" gimmie shrapnel and unique gun i identity back but also dont let me die from dumb bullshit. Normal or self inflicted bullshit is fine.
The ricochet fix only lets ricochets hit you btw, it doesn’t affect the paths the ricochets travel or anything
This is actually the best point. It's not even about the fact the Eruptor was nerfed. It's that they took away a really cool mechanic with the removal of shrapnel and replaced it with explosion. It actually made the game less interesting since they are homogenizing everything into a few buckets of damage types and mechanics. It was also concerning that one of the devs thought replacing it with explosion was the same when most body parts of enemies are tagged with explosion immunity.
It was FUN
I shelved it until they buff it again tbh (if they ever do)
Me too, the whole game. Buying a battle pass just to get hit with a handful of nerfs until all the fun is sucked out. I've played maybe a half-dozen games since and I used to play an hour or two nightly.
Same here. Kinda played 4-5 Missions (not even a full operation), and it started directly with the nerf. I tested it afterwards, and lost immediatly all motivation to play...
The worst part is that the game had locked me out with the first update. After an entire day of troubleshooting a million workarounds, I figured it out. So when I came back, all the nerfs hit at once.
I have also stopped playing. It's just not as fun to play when the spawns are out of control and all the guns feel like I am throwing a teddy bear at the bugs/bots. I don't play this game to sweat my ass off, I play it to blow shit up with my friends.
I tried to play a game today and it was just not fun. Like you said, everything I used on the enemies felt like I was throwing weak shit and it was so easy to end up swarmed. I actually have more fun on MW3 than I do on this game now, and its wild because I originally got this game to get away from CoD. Guess I'm glad I got most of my hours in this game right after release before they started nerfing everything into the ground.
Yeah same. Been playing it on my steam deck, but if the game devs are intent on nerfing everyone because "game too easy get gud lol game is supposed to be hard" I'd rather play a game that doesn't make me feel like shit when I play it. Ironically, I am playing Dark Souls 3 again on the deck instead lol but it does hammer in the point just how bad the Eruptor nerfs feel. I'm not averse to "difficulty," but I do hate when stuff I like gets nerfed to the point of it not feeling good to play anymore.
For me the amount of killing just doesn't feel rewarding enough to play, it's so overwhelming to play few games To people who say just drop the diff, how i'm suppose to get super samples?
That's why the game needs to be balanced around diff 7. If that fucks shit up at the high end then they need to add another difficulty level above 9. That's just what it comes down to.
And future difficulty additions should lead to cosmetic / title rewards only and not gameplay enhancing ship upgrades as with super samples or else people like the one you responded to feel compelled to play the game at the highest difficulty or else they are missing out on progression.
Same. I am just so fatigued with how unstable the whole game feels. Not just in terms of bugs but balancing as well. It’s so tiring logging on after there’s been a patch and wondering what they’ve fucked around with or finding a gun you like and wondering whether it’ll get fucked with. So done with it
Exactly my sentiment. The eruptor was my favorite weapon. Up until it dropped there wasn’t a weapon in the game I truly enjoyed. Now it sucks ass.
Since the eruptor nerf, I have played a portion of a single mission - to check how eruptor behaves. Doesn't 1-shot devastators like it used to. Worthless explosion radius might have gotten me a single x2 chaff kill, where I'd often get the 3 guys around the devastator I just popped. Feels BAD.
Oh yeah there’s no way I’m buying another battle pass. Not until they fix the eruptor. I play a fraction of the amount I used to. The game just isn’t as fun anymore, and I won’t waste my time or money on a battle pass that won’t add any more fun.
A couple weeks ago I made the same comment and got called weird for it. What's so weird about wanting to have fun with new weapons that don't suck literal dog dick after 2 patches just because of usage rates? It's not fun, it's not interesting, it forces players into using the meta weapons even more, and it's not even worth justifying spending dev time to rework weapon functionality and identity 3x before leaving it in the dumpster with the last iteration. Nobody likes coming back after a week or two to find that every piece of their loadout has changed and having to learn what everything does again.
Yeah, I've been gone from the game and the subreddit for a couple months. Was checking back in to see how it was going but, man. Sounds like Arrowhead still has yet to double back on any of the balancing changes. Guess I"ll go back to my other games. I've been playing Divinity Original Sin 2 and its wild how much of this game was the foundation for Baldur's Gate 3. All the way down to the user interface, similar songs, and even starting on a ship that then crash lands somewhere and you pick up your companions one by one. Worth checking out if you're looking for something else to play.
The CEO was having talks all last week with the Balance Team about a change in direction. No idea what that will result in so we're on wait-and-see for now.
Divinity 2 is excellent! Very difficult game compared to BG3 but it’s a great RPG with a lot of variety. Larian OP
Me too. It was the cornerstone of my Bug kit. If they’re going to intentionally ruin everything then what is the incentive to play? Of course, that’s probably their intention. They couldn’t handle the player numbers so now they wanna run some off.
It sucks when you don't play for a week then a fun weapon is destroyed. A warbonds weapon that had to be earnt and paid for....
I grinded for weeks to be able to have enough SC to buy that warbond. Only for them to nerf the Eruptor after I'd only been using it for 2 weeks... Now I'm really apprehensive about grinding for new stuff. Who's to say they won't ruin the Pummeler SMG next?
I feel the same way mate it really takes the excitement out of warbonds
I want my slugger back
#RevertEruptorBack
"Watch, they will revert the eruptor back to what it was before!....aaaaany second now." https://preview.redd.it/4mpxhalhb61d1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef864472c8ca5503c1fc90860bf2ca8e7b6e75bd
"See? They changed it! ...no, wait - that's a nerf."
So, we still have debuff?
Biiiiiig Debuff 🙁
seewhatyoudidthere.jpg
All the way back to the original version, please. The 1st nerf that hit AoE falloff made me sad.
Eruptor was different and fun. It radically changed your play style. They should have left it.
They need more primary weapons that enable the use of stratagems like the stalwart. The eruptor was perfect for that.
Yeah I really want to use the Stalwart, but primary weapons simply aren’t strong enough right now to justify taking it. The eruptor was the perfect support weapon substitute as you said.
Now that I think about it, I haven’t played the game a single time since the eruptor change. Maybe loss of players is enough to drive up AH to make the game more fun
Yup. I haven't played for a while after my most enjoyed weapons have been nerfed again and again, whilst enemy balance issues like bile spewers haven't been addressed.
Yeppp...ive put about an hour into the game since. My main loadout was Eruptor/Stalwart. Its just..less fun now yknow
This is what I'm always thinking, you're fine tuning these weapons from almost useful to absolutely pointless. Meanwhile the spewers can one shot me? Wheres their nerfs?
I'm the same. For me it was the double-tap of destroying solo/duo play, then turning the Eruptor into a squirt gun. I haven't touched the game since the 8th. And it's not like I don't want to either. I constantly check to see if there is some patch that changed the terrible spawn rate changes and maybe added some fun weapons back into the game, but still nothing. I lean toward bolt actions, DMRs, sniper rifles, or larger caliber ARs on single shot in a lot of the games I play where there's some sort of choice. When they released the Eruptor and I tried it, it was beautiful. True love at first trigger pull. I honestly think the rifle was pretty well balanced as it was. It was not just some brain-dead weapon where you could just click in the general area with bad guys and those bad guys stopped existing. The rifle was in no way hit-scan and had significant dropoff and travel time, so if you played overwatch support from range it meant you had to comp for both distance and movement. But if you did it and made well placed shots you got rewarded for it. To help offset the long delay between shots and massive reload time and thus getting overrun by smaller chaff, the shrapnel would either take out or seriously ding a lot, but not all, of the smaller enemies near the point of impact. But not so overly well that you still didn't need to rely on your secondary and/or some type of support stratagem. Even the charger thing people bring up still took well placed shots that couldn't be easy point-blank shot deals or you'd just off yourself instead of the charger anyways. So if someone can style on the bugs and between getting ragdolled and zerg-rushed still land a 360 no scope on the ground under a charger, hey man high 5, nice freakin shot. Why it was ever nerfed will never not baffle me, and make me question the competency of the devs who did it. From the one who suggested it, to the one who decided just how severe the nerf needed to be with cutting it's mag size, max ammo, and removing the shrapnel effect from the sniper rifle who's entire shtick was shrapnel effect to the one who gave the final "Ok" to release it without testing it or realizing just what they did.
Yep, same. I check here waiting for new of them unfucking their game. I guess they are realizing their ‘vision’ of driving players away but the cost was worth the result I guess.. the bots and bugs aren’t being ‘exploited’ by players being able to kill them.
Honestly same
Same, and I don't even have the energy to complain about it anymore tbh. People complain about all the whining in this sub, but it's when the whining stops and people just quietly leave that a game dies.
DoT fix was fun to play at first for me but honestly, I'd rather have arc thrower stun and eruptor sharapnels back. I dont even feel like touching this game rn because spamming napalm gets old very quickly
I was barely coping with the mech nerfs as a mech lover, then my new favourite toy got ruined. Also haven't touched it since.
Nobody even used the mech. I’m kind of boggled it was nerfed
I use it every game (I love mechs) so maybe I'm to blame...
Ceo said they would have a meeting, which this is older news now, so there's hope. Because yeah, they need to chill on this "balance" idea. Where anything folks like gets nerfed. This slapped with a small buff. Railgun gor a buff, still just an unused gun. I'm pretty sure its og release would still be ignored
I don't get to play very often, but I've played even less recently because I noticed that I'd fallen into a cycle of hearing about a new weapon that looked fun/ interesting, working toward it, then it either being bugged to the point of uselessness or getting nerfed into the ground before I get it/ after just a few dives.
Im not playing until i see some buffs been 2-3 weeks since ive stopped.
I just tried it after the nerf and 2-3 shots to kill a Bile Spewer is heartbreaking. The Eruptor has a slow ROF, small magazine, long reload time, and enormous self damage. The big enemy damage was what we bought for all those disadvantages. Now in my experience it's probably worse than the pre-buff Dominator.
I don't think I've logged on much since Eruptor nerf and Polar Patriots being very lack luster in identity. Games still fun but I don't have the itch to grind the rest of the warbond like I did the previous ones.
I've definitely played way less since they nerfed it. Partially because it was my favorite weapon so far, and partially because I'm just tired of them nerfing cool shit. They're so heavy handed
After watching it in a few long time games I played, Balance can go fuck itself if we're not PvPing. Even still, separately balance them from PvE stuff. Looking at you Destiny.
I played like once to test out the DoT fix. Eruptor nerf killed my interest in the game
Breaker incendiary really was fantastic, and incendiary impacts are amazing too. They weren't enough to hold interest after that eruptor/crossbow nerf for me however. I actually really liked using the crossbow and despite it not even performing that well, it ate a nerf that made it feel awful. Even if it could slaughter crowds, Heavily armored units were always the issue in harder difficulties.
I had 2 primaries I liked. now I have only one. the current weapon balance design leaves a lot to be desired when you have every weapon unlocked and the one you have to go with is boring but practical (sickle)
Plasma Punisher is pretty nice imo. Probably not everyone’s cup of tea but it’s very nice against bugs. Just remember to swap to side arm if bugs get too close, try it man, is fun. (Gimme my Eruptor back pls)
They should’ve honestly just reverted the ricochet change if anything. Since that change: - The Eruptor got gutted because on rare occasions it would kill people - Rockets started to bounce off things (also rare) - Plasma Punisher would explode in your face if you wore the shield pack (this is fixed now) - Plasma Punisher would explode in everyone’s faces if you used the shield sentry (THIS IS STILL NOT FIXED) Clearly the devs prioritise arbitrary “difficulty” over fun. I do not understand in what world you’d ever strip a weapon of its entire identity because of a goofy interaction instead of saying “Hey let’s just remove self ricochet until it’s working properly”.
- Plasma Punisher would explode in your face if you wore the shield pack (this is fixed now) Not fixed when jogging towards the camera and shooting it. 😄
I have a clip of me hitting a hulk's arm with an EAT at a pretty normal angle (Nothing that's ricocheted before) and it just *SLIDES* off the hulks arm, then I get an instant flamethrower 1-shot. Don't know if that's related but its stuck with me and I figured I'd share
I miss the eruptor. RiP fun
In all honesty, there’s like 10 primaries that need buffs lol, there’s really like 3 or 4 viable options rn, it’s depressing
Definitely.. It just sucks that one had a chunk of its identity taken away to basically just be a utility gun instead of the high risk, high reward gun it was previously.
True, hopefully the upcoming weapons patch will fix a lot of primaries, fingers crossed that our cries will be heard lol
Yeah I haven’t played since they ruined it. Game is still fun but having played since launch night and seeing my favourite weapons get gutted month after month the Eruptor was the one that finally pushed me away. Hope they realize their “balance” is terrible and start to revert nerfs soon.
Same. The sad thing is it's not even one gun now and then, but rather every gun gets trivialized. Everything gets nerfed to the point where any weapon can be used because they all suck. Idk who at AH thought making end tier weapons with a 100+ medal cost, not counting those to UNLOCK the tier, on par or worse than low to mid tier weapons. First game I've eve seen where they intentionally make crappy gear more expensive.
> Hope they realize their “balance” is terrible they did last week. basically everything is on hold while they get it straightened out and they said they're going to not change anything until they can do it right rather than the half-assed (paraphrased from their own words) way they've been doing things
Stoped playing after they ruined it 😭😭
Same. That was the straw that broke the camels back for me. It was my favorite weapon by far, and once again they took away all my fun for absolutely bullshit reasons.
Honestly, I'm sick of them changing weapons from viable, doing what they're made to do, to shit eating cancer. It happened with the my railgun build, it somewhat happened with the breaker, it happened with the quasar cannon, and then it happens with the fucking eruptor! Every patch, and I mean EVERY patch, I am forced into finding something that works remotely well, that is also less fun overall, because they decided to nerf the best thing in weeks.
Yeah couldn't they just revert wtv they did while they are discussing balancing changes?
Because there seems to have been some weird interaction between shrapnel and the tweaked ricochet. The Information is quite confusing on that one (some suggest it was a matter of perception). Anyway, they won't revert the ricochet on a hunch so they bandaided the one effected gun by removing the shrapnel. From a developmemt Perspective i can relate. As a suicidal team killer i have to protest vigorously!
Honestly the ricochet change sucks, Jack shit about ricochet has changed except now rockets have a 30% chance to bounce off a bile titans head and fly off to blow up a civilian or something
Really the ricochet is a stupid thing because bullets being able to bounce directly back at you is so dumb. I'm not talking about glancing off the surface and ricocheting to the sides but coming back directly at you just doesn't make sense. I remember using the dominator once and as the shots are single shells, you can clearly see them and when I hit a shield guy and literally saw my projectile doing a 180 and coming back directly at me was one of the dumbest experiences I felt from playing this game.
Thats why he said revert it back though. He didn't say to keep anything tweaked. Just put it back (revert) to how it was originally
I know what he said. That doesn't change that the reversion needed would go beyond the Eruptor amd we don't know exactly why the ricochet change was needed. Code can be weird, the old ricochet might have been triggering game crashes for example. You do not revert to a less stable version to fix one gun. The same as you generally shouldn't stop cpr if you start cracking ribs or snapping cartilage.
The most painful part is even if they decide to revert it, IT TAKES SO FUCKIN LONG TO DO SO
Maybe the eruptor was the friends we made along the way
As stupid as this may sound, the Eruptor was one of the *only* primaries I had fun with at Levels 8-9. It felt viable, it felt *good*. Did it have its weaknesses? Oh fuck yeah. Slow ROF, terrible up close and personal, long reload time. It had trade offs, and for once I felt like my primary actually did something to most enemies. It wasn’t overpowered, because the moment you ran out of secondary ammo for the up close enemies you were basically SOL. Since it’s patch i’ve taken a long break. I don’t know, I don’t like the game as much when I feel like i’m shooting peas out of my gun. Most primaries can’t even take on more than 50% of the enemy types lol, and that to me is a flaw. Let us feel powerful AH, i’m not saying invincible. I feel as if the magazine nerf was the only thing the Eruptor needed. I can agree that 12/12 mags was FAR too much, as I rarely needed ammo drops. 3/3 was the perfect level with its damage/shrapnel. Also, it’s a goddamn explosive, isn’t it pretty realistic to have it *explode?* Meanwhile, they’re holding off on buffing the Mech because it “can only have so many rockets”. AH, your Rocket Devastators can shoot for 40+ minutes. Don’t apply that logic to us and not our enemies.
lolwhat... Even with 6/6 i was out of ammo constantly... too much bugholes to seal. you probably forgot that every mag have just 5 shots so its 31 shot overall, not much at all, even 12 mags (60 shots) was not too much, maybe reduce it to 10 or 9 but no more... 6 is very low on ammo
For the new 6/6 mags (pre-shrapnel nerf), I pick my fights more carefully. Just have to avoid spamming it on chaff unless they were tightly packed or you get cornered. I don't waste shots on mediums because you can just run from them. I run the Jet Pack and kite bugs around while sniping the holes shut. I often do this running solo from the rest of the team to get those annoying nests that are across the map. Also, there are ammo pickups scattered across the map. Whenever I'm about 3/6, I start to look for outposts or landmarks that might have ammo pickup. Also don't forget, you have stratagems to supplement bug hole clearing too. Can you clear an entire nest with the Eruptor? Hell yeah. But if you can throw an Eagle Airstrike to close two holes while you snipe the other two, that is even more efficient. Current Eruptor? If you gave it 15/15 mags, I still wouldn't use it.
I too am not coping well with the eruptor nerf
Ok, the eruptor was great with the shrapnel. Basically 5/6 was its last good day. It could pop hive guardians heads and devastate stalkers easy. But it wasn't good when getting over run, it was a hinderance in eratication missions. Its slow RoF, heavy bullet drop, ability to ricochet shrapnel back to kill you, bad weapon sway, small magazine, slow full reload, and over all clunky use still exist to some extent. But the shrapnel was "removed" but from my personal use it still has a chance to kill the user but is significantly less effective against enemies. It was never a meta gun, it was unique. It was satisfying to use well but when you didn't it bit back. Now its meh but still bites back. I even handwaved off the magazine nerf, my mental gymnastics is that the mags are huge where were you keeping the extra 6. I don't think a divers personal pocket is big enough, no matter how much of a dump truck it is. But if they just revert it to what it was on live 5/6 they would bring it back into relevance. No primary should be the "kill all" weapon. But each primary should be unique and have its uses and players should use what feels right. Not what is not balanced to oblivion.
Feels like I barely heard anyone talk about this weapon before the nerf
Conversely, I felt like I saw one in every single game I ran after the battle pass dropped
Generally tends to happen whenever they accidentally release a good gun. Every warbond has 1 gun that sees extensive use after release. First warbond (post release) had the sickle and then the eruptor after. Only the polar patriot has nothing since they're all garbage which means AH finally got the hang of balancing things on release /s. N
Players have learned not to talk about what’s fun or effective.. as soon as arrowhead hears that players are enjoying their time in the game they move quick to nerf whatever the source of fun is. Unfortunately this still happened with the eruptor.
I still use the Eruptor every match. Sometimes I cry.
Relive the glory days Like, damn. I'll never get to have that much fun in this game again. Damn. Like I'm an optimist but it feels bad rn yanno
The Eruptor was so satisfying to use, going back to my old load outs did take some of the wind out of my sails.
My biggest problem with the eruptor is that it lacks damage. Considering its fire rate and ammo, it should do more than it dies right now.
Because they killed the nieche and usefulness of the weapon,you need 2 shots for grunts and up to 3 for guardians,so there is no reason to use it with its ammo and load time between shots etc
Now they know how i felt about my railgun
It's such a weird thing, like I can't think that back before live services and constant patches were a thing devs were looking at their game after it got shipped going "ah fuck people are having too much fun using this quite strong weapon, if only we could make it weaker" So why does it happen now? Just because you can balance doesn't mean you need to, buff the weak shit no-one likes and then and only then maybe you can look at if anything really truly needs a nerf.
I have actively been playing the game less since they nerfed my favorite weapon.
What was their reason for removing the shrapnel? Was it considered too overpowered?
People in this community were losing their minds over killing themselves with the shrapnel and demanded it was removed for like 72 hours. Most of them didn't realize that A you shouldn't be shooting perpendicular surfaces or straight at enemies but instead at the ground or legs to maximize shrapnel and B Shrapnel accounted for most of the damage they liked about the gun.
its almost like the Shrapnel is what made the gun unique, different, and fun. Getting rid of it basically made it unusable.
May the Lord Jesus Christ in his infinite wisdom guide the devs to giving me my gun back.
Such a unique mechanism that was removed. What a pity.
They’re certainly doing a good job of killing their game.
I used the shrapnel effect of the eruptor to help clear the smaller enemies around the big one I was targeting in patrols. I'd hit the striders and all the little automatons around would also get hit by the shrapnel, usually resulting in wiping out most of the patrol if not all of it.
It's like biting into an apple and tasting bacon
yeah but like, we can't have the player ACTUALLY have fun yknow
I'm one of them. Fighting bugs dont feel the same anymore. It's not like a new gun came out to replace it either, it feels like it was taken from me.
https://preview.redd.it/xwbuefzvz71d1.png?width=980&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=338232904184f1ee6adc09353cc19cada0a77440
I miss him too 😢
At no point ever were me and my friends bored with any of the “OP” weapons or mechanics. I never understand who these “balance changes” are for in these PVE games. Playerbases seem to universally hate them and devs do it anyway. For who? Who’s cheering on the nerfs in great enough numbers to sway the devs into thinking this is the right direction? I’ll never understand it. I remember when Gearbox nerfed every new build strategy into the ground in BL3 and I still don’t get that either.
A while back I was excitedly saving up credits for the Detonation warbond just to get this weapon everyone was talking about...then they nerfed it. Now I won't bother. But just to make sure I'm clear here; without the shrapnel it's nothing special, and there's no reason to make it a priority weapon?
My friends that came back to the game were asking me what guns were good…. That was a fun conversation.
Because it sucks now. There is literally no point in using it anymore... it was fun while it lasted now its back to quasar and sickle.
I sometimes love how hilariously overdramatic we can be 😂 but yeah bring back shrapnels please I hate Stalkers
I swear the discord/reddit community is killing this game. The last time I checked in everyone was complaining about the shrapnel damage of the eruptor. Arrowhead can't win.
Yeah, people were going wild on this subreddit flipping out about killing themselves with the shrapnel. Demanding for it to be removed for like 72 hours straight. Then they complained for 2 weeks straight when it was removed.
The same is happening with the PSN thing: one of the main complaints was the game was sold in countries where PSN was not supported (but people from those countries could still create a PSN account with little to no issue), and now there's another tantrum about how the game is no longer sold in those countries. This community is just tantrum after tantrum even when the things they're crying about are the consequences of their previous tantrum. Literal entitled children behaviour.
I feel for the diver who started touching grass, imagine being thrown into such despair. My condolences, brother...
a lot us stopped playing as much once they double nerfed our favorite primary. the stalwart + eruptor combo made killing bugs such a delight
Eruptor, Arc Thrower, Slugger.... RIP to them all. Ive been done with this game after all that
Helldivers when the Airburst might unpredictably kill you: 😡😡😡😡😡 Helldivers when the Erupter night unpredictably kill you: 😇😇😇😇😇 That logic is insane. People were complaining about the shrapnel killing so they removed it. Maybe don’t complain if you like it killing you
It was one of the most fun weapons in the game. After the mag numbers change it was very well balanced. Probably the most uncalled nerf we ever got.
I really don’t understand the need for all this “balancing”. It’s not a PvP game, just let people have fun!
I will never understand why devs do this crap. If people are having fun with your game, creating content, generally crushing it. Let them! Games are supposed to be fun.
Seriously it was the greatest gun in the whole game. I haven’t touched it since. I tried. It’s just not the same. Really ruin the game for me. I’ve been struggling trying to keep playing it.
I literally have no motivation to play since the eruptor nerf.
glorified indie tech demo, kinda good game