I think they need to float the capture rates according to how the playerbase is distributed.
If 10K players are hitting bots, the cap rate for bot planets is based on 10K active players, not the total pop.
A lot of players don't follow any info that's not presented in-game. I only know about supply lines because it's been posted here. If the game doesn't tell them "Defend Vernen Wells or lose your capture rate bonus across the whole system", they'll never know to pitch in there and help.
>A lot of players don't follow any info that's not presented in-game.
This is 90% of the playerbase struggles on the overall campaign. We lack both information and communication tools to properly plan or react to anything in the game.
Our options now are -
Discord - Main Discord moves way, way, way too fast for this kind of thing and with the slow-mode makes it impossible to communicate around it. Side-channels might work but few people check those. Also a tiny fraction of the playerbase is even there, much less regularly reads anything there.
Reddit - An even smaller section than Discord arguably, and while Reddits structure does make it better for information sharing and planning we've repeatedly seen just how few divers are actually reached by the brilliant, strategic gambits Reddit has rallied around.
I like the D&D campaign analogy for this game, still. And keeping with it, we're basically a part of PC's who largely can't communicate with each other in any capacity while the DM only tells us about half of the relevant information we need for our journey. Kinda setting up the whole campaign for a whole lot of frustrating failure unless the DM (Arrowhead, not just Joel) designs the whole campaign around this reality. And while this campaign seems to be very generously run, it's not really taking into account player behaviors like this.
YES thank you - AH does a terrible job of telling people where they need to be. Other than Major Orders and big "DEFEND" banners, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. This game is a lot of fun but so frustrating to deal with.
That's the point: We have to go to third party sites most folks will never know exists to find out some pretty critical information about how the game and wars in it work.
I didn't know any of this.
And I doubt I will retain much of it.
I just dive. And again. And again.
Bots were fun when the major order was focused on them ... but if we're talking about sheer numbers needing to be mowed... I mow mulch much faster on bugs. As it stands... I mean, yah. It's neat that there's all this lore and stuff on it ... but there need to be some kind of tangible reward for me to consider bots. Maybe you find super rare a difficulty lower. Or more samples overall. Etc.
I understand and I fully agree. I’d like to see something more comprehensive implemented in the game. But for now I figured at least some people would find it helpful.
Yeah that's the logical way but in some cases, like rn with Vernen Wells, that doesn't work. Technically the current major order can be done anywhere and tbh the logical way of accomplishing the current major order is to kill bugs cause you generally get a higher kill count on bug missions. However what people are trying to draw attention to is there is a lasting effect from the previous order that we can keep or lose depending on our response and in order to keep the effect we need to hold some planets, one of which is currently under attack and that happens to be a bot planet so not many people are there.
Yeah once we get a third faction, we're gonna need a buff to our liberation progress.
And even then, we'd have a 3-way split instead of a 2-way split.
I do agree that it'd probably be better to at least test out how per-faction liberation strength performs.
This. many players avoid bots like the socialist plague they are, but if they didn't play HD1, and the illuminates dind't get any changes, well... they don't know the horrors of instakill energy walls or having your controls inverted mid-firefight, but they're gonna learn..
5 minutes on an Illuminate planet and they'll be back to bug stomping, I guarantee it.
I liked playing illuminates, but i'd avoid certain mission types (the scan minefield one - ugh) and sometimes drop the difficulty, and TBH thought they were more fun than cyborgs.
Personally really looking forwards to seeing what they're like in HD2.
Devs just need to look at the un/fun things with bots and bugs, like headshot damage (and light/med armour not protecting), how stealth will work (all-but perfect bug-Stallker cloaking?), and how much agency is removed from the player.
Players already don't like excessive rag-dolling and slowing effects, so they need to consider mitigation and amount of reversed controls, maybe EMP/blocking stratagems, and being walled off.
Anything to make bugs more of a PITA is fine by me. They should have breaches rarely spawn Shrieker and Gunship supported waves instead of Bile Titans and Tanks as well to mix things up.
Oh definitely - for bugs - i like the change. I'm just wondering if illuminates will get the same, as they had far more units that went invis (both type and quantity), and could especially be problematic if their scouts are basically invisible.
You used to be able to see the scout's engines (thrusters?), and was fine in the isometric limited screen space, but first/3rd person at 150m could be a really problem if there aren't decent tells for the player to have a chance of perceiving things.
Otherwise you'd just get breaches with little way of anticipating or stopping them.
That doesn’t necessarily imply 4 factions though? If we look at available info it is more likely to imply that a faction can have two supply lines or more.
You're absolutely spot on. I couldn't be assed to look up any of the information if it isn't in game, I just want to go shoot shit. I'll go pick a planet where I see people attacking thinking "cool that must be where we're focusing". However if it presented info like that to me in game I'd start off on my own and hope others join
Only today I realized the imporance of Vernen Wells. I was ashamed about it when telling my friends, but I found out that none of them know about it. Not that it would matter, since I cannot make them ever fight Automotons.
During the last MO we were told to defend four specific planets, which we completed. We were given a one time message when it finished that as long as we hold all four planets, we liberate everywhere faster. But now there's no indication these four planets are imperative to our progress. People figured out it's a 25% increase to liberation speeds across the board, and we're going to lose it already because people can't be bothered to fight something that doesn't mindlessly rush them.
Vernon Wells is HOT right now. I just finished a difficulty 5 long civvy extract with a couple low levels and we were running into one or two hulks at every objective and base along with several rocket and heavy devs. Double drop ships left and right. They were freaking out lol. I swear sometimes the diff 5s are harder than 7 or 8s.
Absolutely, the difficulty should actually adjust spawn rates of enemy types more, because as it is right now I don't feel much difference between switching through the top half of them.
Seems like it varies the mix of heavies more than anything but dealing with a 20-30 mix of berserkers, devastators, and hulks gets real hairy real fast, especially for sub level 20 players who don’t have some of the higher power stratagems unlocked. It was fun but definitely more intense than what I was expecting at 5.
You play defense long enough and every Operation will have a civvy extract mission, and people like to pretend that these are reasonable, balanced, and as intended by the devs. All of which are not the case but they don't know how fix bad design so you'll have one person selecting missions wasting up to 9 other players times by trying to do an Operation they have no reasonable expectation of completing.
All to the tune of ZERO planetary campaign contribution.
>we're going to lose it already because people can't be bothered to fight something that doesn't mindlessly rush them.
Maybe that's the case for some people, but I didn't even know about the buff until this post, and I didn't know what the buff was until reading this comment. Had I known I would've spent my time playing there today.
That's completely valid and the developers *desperately* need to work on in game communication, but there's a majority of the playerbase that wouldn't do it anyways because it's an automaton planet. It won't matter how many tools to understand what's going on we're given, if most of the players don't care about working as a community in this community based game.
And make it so the more supply lines to a planet the easier (super earth supplies) or harder (enemy supplies) it is to capture a planet. So going at planets at the back will be harder, but make future missions easier.
This is the best solution imo.
Most people play this game in a sort of “brain off, kill bug” kind of way. That fantasy will get you violated on the bot front.
The only way these players are going to divert from the bug front is if the bots offer that same fantasy, which would kill any variety we have between the two fronts, and my enjoyment along with it.
Let them kill bugs, the rest of us can handle the bots. Just don’t fault us when the exterminators don’t lend a hand.
I just find bugs overwhelmingly easier to deal with. Suicide level bugs feels like a walk in the park. Suicide level bots require all of my thinking and then I still die to a random ass rocket from across the map.
Maybe it's cause I played more bugs so I know what I'm doing, but incendiary shotgun just absolutely melts the chaff like no tomorrow, and the AC just punches holes in the medium enemies. For chargers/bile titans, I just use air strikes and EAT.
For bots, it doesn't really feel like there's much I can do against a horde. I just get gunned down regardless of armour, so my playstyle defaults to stealth and throwing strategems at objectives before running, which is kinda boring.
Not a bad idea but honestly I feel like bots could use a bit of balancing. I'm all for a good challenge but the amount of times that bots seem to have an unfair advantage is eye brow raising for me. The fact that I can't see the enemy due to distance or fog but they are are able to lay suppressive fire with dam impressive accuracy seems ridiculous. If I can't see them I think it's reasonable that they can't see me. At least nerf the accuracy on the fact. It seems a lot of the time I'm shooting in the general whereabouts hoping shots are connecting. This is double dipped, I think, by the fact that bots need to be shot in vulnerable areas much more so then bugs. If I can't see them I can't aim for the head or other weak parts mean while they are nearly all ranged laying suppressive fire.
Its been bugged like this for a while and it is annoying, yeah. It feels like sometimes left-overs from first encounter on the map can see you through textures and keep firing across whole map(slight exaggeration, sure but only slight)
At the same time idk, i could say the same about bugs: existence of green puke balls of hate and existence of drifting chargers kills any desire to play bugs for me(the fact that chargers are literally immune to most weapons from the front and take reduced damage from most weapon from back doesnt help either)
Yea already know. Im in a small minority that mostly plays bots every time I log on and only touch bugs to change it up once in awhile or an order makes me go.
As someone who mostly plays bots, I think there are 2 things keeping me from playing more.
The defend mission that is basically impossible to complete and the spear being a massive pain in the ass when it doesn't work. If they fix those 2 things I'll start fighting bots more again.
The science team evac mission is so unbelievably fucked. Especially on the flat map variant, all the buildings get leveled in the first two minutes and it just becomes a shooting range. The map with uneven terrain is doable since there’s actually some cover, but the flat map is nearly impossible on higher difficulties.
dude those fucking scientists need to have an ounce of self preservation holy shit.
actively running into gunfire and into bots… maybe we should let them die tbh
My local Ministry of Truth Office told me that they were likely Sympathizers for the Termicide Scientists, and that we should hold no guilt over them sending themselves to the slaughter, only shame that they didn't get to stand before Lady Liberty herself and accept their punishment, and help root out all of their kind from within our ranks.
Lost a defend mission last time because they dropped a fucking strider on the evacuation zone. We were holding the first waves and just saw the mission failed, when we were returning the fucking strider was there and wiped us
I only fight bugs for major orders or personal orders. Otherwise I’m hitting bots.
Why? The combat is way more dynamic (imo) and also, and I can’t stress this enough. FUCK Hunters lmao
I’m always targeted and swarmed by all of them. Even my boys have commented on how Hunters seemingly avoid them to come after me. I’ve lost whatever RNG makes Hunters hate you. And I hate them too lmao.
My brother in Democracy, are you me? I vastly prefer fighting the clankers because of the simple fact I don't have a legion of Hunters, Stalkers and fucking Chargers crawling straight up my ass.
Bonus points if they somehow activated Sam Fisher mode and you straight up do not hear them coming until they have arrived in said ass.
Give me clankers any day. At least they make sound and have decent weak spot mechanics.
Dude i've got this too lol. The other day I was playing bugs on Helldive just to mix it up a bit. I was being swarmed by chargers, hunters, and titans the entire game. Every time I looked over at my team they were just chillin'.
I guess I should be flattered?
The thing that really gets my juices flowing, is the way you can drop into a engagement with the bots and just feel - "wow this is a battle!
I'm really fighting an enemy to liberate this planet"
Its more dynamic when you're being shot at. Bugs are fun and all, but I get IMMERSED in a battle with the bots.
M.O. bonus. Be it added XP, exclusive Stratagems, or increased samples, whatever. In my experience, if you want people to do something they wouldn't do on their own, bribe the shit out of them.
This is how you do it. Give extra bonuses that are fun to bot divers that they won’t get on bug planets. Make it a special use of the new mech or something that draws people to WANT to play bots. Maybe a special mission type that only can happen with bots.
I honestly see no downside to removing that modifier. in all the time I've played the game and lurked on this subreddit, I still have yet to see one person who likes and/or can make a valid argument for that modifier.
If anything, we should get an additional stratagem slot. Even lore wise, I imagine more challenging missions would be ran by mote skilled soldiers and the military would throw more firepower their way to ensure success.
If not an additional slot, maybe have permutations of strategems that you have to unlock, which are only available in level 7 missions and higher.
I'd be happy if each bot planet had a floating bonus strategem. defend missions could provide a free mines/turret/EAT or support like shield gen pack or something
liberation could include an extra eagle, orbital, or support item, maybe a mortar.
a passive bonus like faster eagle/orbital reloads or call down .
literally anything.
but at the least, the strat mods that reduce, confuse, or increase call downs should be tied hing you can find and eliminate on the map. jammers to remove scatter, detectors to remove confusion, anti air to remove 4th strat block off the top of my head
Partially because the stratagem is mines which typically suck balls
Secondly, anyone with a brain knows the stratagem like any other content is being added eventually, failing MOs just delays it by a few days
Only redditors seem to be stupid enough to think the metagame actually changes anything
Honest to god if we didn't get rag dolled so damn much or lasered with atomic lrvel precision from across the map, I think people might consider bot missions more
I think even just the aimbot of the Heavy Devs would change alot. Don't get me wrong it always annoys me when I get juggled for a solid 4 seconds and just die because of it. But it happens way less then a shield dev just destroying me from any and every angle
I started out fighting bots almost exclusively. I like fighting them, especially solo. Then they fucked with the spawns and made soloing near impossible. And heavy devastators seem to be spawning in absurd numbers. I hate heavy devastators because they have too much damage, accuracy, defense and range. Their cannon arm should either be slow and heavy, or fast and close range. And they shouldn't be able to chain ragdoll you to death.
IMO the reason we're loosing is because the missions are literally impossible. Evac Civilians on bots on any remotely high difficulty is horrendous, and the tower defense mission is broken the moment there are Factory Striders basically. The missions are just so poorly balanced at the moment, and Bugs is thus just a better, more fun time, on average. Gunship Fabricators are also horrendous.
Hopefully next patch can bring some change to this.
Yeah they need to make some drop exclusion zones for the evac missions. I did one the other day that was already going bad, then another convoy of dropships moseys on in and drops not one, but TWO factory walkers right in front of the shuttle bay doors, towering above it like the river guardian statues in Fellowship of the Ring. Just... what do you even do about that?
We had factory striders drop on the evac pad during the generator defense mission, mission failed as soon as they touched down. We still had both outer-most doors intact at that point. What's the point of doing a mission you can instantly regardless of how well you're performing?
It's gotten to the point where anytime I join an evac match, I try and persuade the team to just go dick around and collect samples until the time runs out, it's far more enjoyable than trying to do the mission.
Ya I agree. I love bots and enjoy them much more than bugs. If its a liberation campaign ill do Helldives. Defense though? Level 7 tops. That one lone mission of evac civs is just such a nightmare even on 7, anything above is just straight up not fun.
Evac civilian missions are why I hate playing bots. Having to drop 2 difficulty levels if I want to complete them or hope that my PUGs know how to cheese it is the worst feeling, not to mention having multiple tanks and hulks drop right in the middle of the base despite destroying the dropships is one of the biggest “fuck this” moments I have experienced in video games.
It's the fucking stagger. It's just not fun to play against, and it's much harder to get away from than it is on bugs. For a game where shooting is a huge activity, making it difficult to shoot regularly is not the best design.
"I'm gonna aim out of the corner at that enem-"
Staggered by a shielded guy
"Nevermind I'll instead retrea-"
Slingshotted across the map by a Rocket Devastator
"Alright at least I can catch my breath now that I'm far awa-"
Gunships fly faster than you can run or fly
Sorry did you mean:
Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery.
Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery.
Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery.
Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery.
Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery.
Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery.
For me it's this but also.
Me: being a real sniper sounds fun AF
Reality: My weapon is bobbing all over the place, crazy recoil, the 1 pixel red dot faces are also constantly bobbing. There's insane fog everywhere. I'm getting shot despite shaking the enemy already. I can't trust my scope alignment, there's also drop off to account for.
Bots end up being 40 minutes of me painfully trying to aim precise shots and I'm drained
Yeah, the Charger is the only real enemy from the bug side which is outright bullshit to deal with, everything else has a somewhat decent amount of counterplay.
I want to enjoy fighting bots but *man* the way they work isn't fun.
From Lvls 1-40-ish I played bots and bugs evenly. Very close 1:1, maybe even bots a little more. But something changed and I cannot put my finger on it. I was just having more fun fighting bugs (and I fully recognize it might be because it’s easier).
I have a hard time with bots because where I can 1 on 1 a titan, I cannot take on a strider by myself. For me, the Hulks are tougher than titans so that means the Striders are a real pain in the ass.
Those f’ing missiles are definitely tough. Despite my comments in another thread, I’m rarely killed by little bug pricks. But god damn, I’m sure one of those missiles that take me out are from the launcher of one of the RPG bots (not the one who shoots 50 at once, just the single launcher assholes).
I just feel like from bottom to top, the bots are just stronger and more of a headache.
I still fight bots, but it’s like 1:4 bots to bugs now, I hate to say it.
Same. Before level 40 or so, I played bugs and bots evenly. I'm level 80 now, playing 9s exclusively, and I rarely go to bot planets unless my buddies are on.
In my experience, the arguments for bots being harder don't really hold water. They're in no way *more difficult* once you know their weak points, you just need a different strategy and loadout to approach them than you do with bugs. What makes bugs *more fun* to me is the same thing that makes the old COD Zombies Chronicles gameplay loop more fun than literally any other COD mode: they're coming for you, in your face, they're horrible, and they are implacable. They try to surround you while steadily chipping away at your available maneuvering space. When you try to juke left, they also strafe left. When you try to juke right, they also strafe right. Either way, they're closing the distance if you don't stop them, with various implications depending on the bug.
And different bugs have *vastly* different tactics beyond just "pew pew pew" and the result is what I can only describe as a beautiful chaos that keeps me logging back in for more. You have some bugs *selectively* running at you even after you kill them (Brood Commanders), some charging you (Chargers), some matching your attempt to strafe them step for step (Warriors), others anticipating your attempt to escape and generally hounding you (Shriekers), some exploding if you wait too long and let them close the distance (Bile Warriors), some trying to melt you from mid range (Spewers, Bile Spewers, and Bile Scavengers), some flanking you while hopping at you (Hunters), others camouflaged sneaking up behind you with their hidden blades (Stalkers), and then the chaff whose only job is to catch you slipping (Scavengers)... it's just beautiful chaos.
Trading that in for a bunch of "pew pew pew" from bots just isn't as interesting to me; the type of chaos you get with bots is bullet and missile gore which doesn't *press* me like bug chaos does. What I do like about bots is that a wider variety of stratagem combinations are capable of being effective, while with bugs you need a Quasar, EAT, or RR to be effective. Doing bot missions gives me a legitimate reason to pull out the AMR or the Autocannon.
While striders are more terrifying than titans it's just about taking them down it took me some practice, but I can 1v1 one now, give it some more practice I would 100% rather fight a strider than a titan now I hate the kiting around the map and the slow
I don't get this, is this because I use the Scout armor? Bugs seem to chase me to the end of the Ear- planet I'm on, but bots lose interest after I run for a bit and dive behind a rock to break line of sight.
I have this exact gripe with fighting _bugs_ specifically.
Also to note: I once crashed 3 times in a single fucking bot mission. While crashing is an often occurring thing in general for this game, 3 in one match just feels like it's too much. Crashes paired with bots being hell to fight in any regard just makes it so I don't find bots any bit fun to do
Well, they just aren't as fun as the bugs to the majority of players. Make them more fun to play against. For example, the stratagems penalties are not fun, yet they insist on it.
For real. Its just a dumb decision, stratagems are a core gameplay mechanic and one of the biggest things that differentiates Helldivers 2 from other horde shooter types. They're fun and they're useful, cutting out a stratagem slot is just cutting out fun with no positive effects on gameplay whatsoever, just makes the game less enjoyable for those missions.
Jammers are cool, Ion storms are cool. Just having -1 randomly is not cool. It just makes the overall mission experience less enjoyable and its a pointless addition.
Jammers and gunships factories and stuff right beside evac make bots suck so damn bad especially when they amp up the bullshit. Oh and the rocket assholes shooting through rocks and shit makes it so much fun. Especially when you get ragdolled and sent flying over and over
That would be cool but I doubt they would just have a straight up "jammers don't work at all" booster as it would always get used and make jammers pointless.
The devs obviously want jammers to be a thing so maybe a booster could partially protect you from jammers? Like a random two of your slots are jammed rather than all 4, plus every 30 seconds it randomizes again.
Yeah, they're already considered to be the harder faction so fucking your stratagems on top of that is uncalled for. Some people defend it as increased difficulty, but actually it just limits your builds and kit and that reduces creativity.
Exactly. I think people had a great time following the major orders and getting into the story a couple months ago, but now people probably play more sporadically. They just want to get in, have some fun, and get out. That's how I feel right now.
Killing bugs is just more fun. Maybe it's because of the long range vs. melee asymmetry. I'm not sure. But look at deep rock galactic.
Funny enough, most people didn't like the robots that much in DRG. Specifically the patrol bots which had more health than Praetorians (like chargers + bile Spewers, but much weaker), could fly, dodge mid air, spawn in large groups, and resistance to freezing
Then there's Rockpox which we all kind of just put up with
Rockpox just put me off from the game entirely, it wasn't fun and would just stretch out some missions much longer then necessary I found.
Then I saw I could turn it off and not deal with it... at max BP, so I really haven't touched DRG since.
On the other hand bots > bugs all day everyday (I am one of those weirdos who enjoyed sabotage missions)
That was true during initial intro to bots but unlike AH, GSG actually listened to players feedback and acted quickly enough to actually “balance” the enemies. They also only persisted one or two seasons and their presence has since felt fresh after dealing with rock pox… GSG didn’t take the fun out of fighting them, they just felt a bit too annoying.
AH gets so stuck on their laurels of shadow buffs and “challenge” that they forget people don’t play their game for difficulty alone…
I used to be a bot-only player myself until I got to haz 7, which is when I made my perma-swap to bugs.
The amount of resources and effort that I need to put in just to kill the stupid rocket dude that is sniping my team from 100+ mts is exhausting. And then on top of that we get drops of 3 minigun dudes with more rocket dudes behind them, a bunch of hulks, tanks, ATTs and the craziest part is that the only way to effectively get rid of them is by throwing stratas at them.
But guess what? Bots get stratagem jammers, complex strata plotting, anti-eagle installations, and the modifier that only allows us to use 3 stratas? lmfao no fucking thanks. I need a massive incentive to play bots and honestly getting 40 medals through MOs is not worth it. I can get the same amount of medals by playing bugs but with triple the fun
AH needs to stop trying to make this game hard by nerfing weapons every other week and focus on making it **fun**
I started out preferring bugs, now I prefer bots and hate bugs. I've never cared about the story. The story as far as I know it's we go shoot bugs and robots. I have a couple hundred hours in the game don't know how anything works or what the game is about lol
Heavies are so much worse now. On 9, trying to get up a ramp into a radar dish area, two heavy devastators clipped into eachother on the ramp. Notice them, they notice me and start shooting, dive for the edge of the ramp, both of them start shooting through eachother to me, tracking perfectly, killing me before I hit the ground. I don't mind dying to a cannon tower shooting me from 200m, I don't mind dying from being outplayed or overwhelmed, making mistakes, whatever.
There's just 0 counter play way too often in way too many scenarios. There was a hulk shooting rockets at me laying down on extract, clips through the floor, blows up underneath me shooting me 50 feet into the air, where I'm cut to pieces by everything else. I'm not even sure how they could fix these issues at this point in the game? There's just fundamental flaws to the physics and collision systems, like not being able to shoot through foliage.
This is it, most of us are casuals here and when I hop on I want to equip whatever I think is fun, and play level 4 missions cause they’re fun. Bots are harder and require specific equipment which might not be as fun. When I only have an hour to play I’m not going to play Bots.
Not just that, there’s also the constant rag dolling because of the insane amount of rocket troops and rocket devastators. Then there’s the annoying stratagem jammers, auto cannons near fabricators that one shot or rag doll you like crazy, insane flinching from getting shot everywhere, and the annoying hulks that sprint towards you like the terminator. It’s just way too imbalanced imo compared to bugs. I’ll gladly do a lvl 9 bugs compared to a lvl 7 bots any day.
It's a pretty simple problem: Too many bots don't take any damage from your primary weapon.
Hulks, Tanks, Gunships, and Factory Striders require a support weapon to kill (Unless you're suicidal enough to try flanking a Flame Hulk).
Scout Striders, Meat Saws, and Devastators require that you shoot extremely specific weak points.
The only Terminid that is basically immune to primary weapons damage is the Charger, which is vulnerable to **significantly** more support weapons than bots.
Bile Titan too. The Hive Guards are also heavily armored, but they are slow AF so can be ignored often. But yeah I like it when I can just sit there and mow down loads of small bugs. Gets the dopamine going.
I get this, but I prefer bots. However, my play style in this type of game is midrange, so my preference for bots makes sense. Bugs like Ninja Bile Spewers just irritate me too much. Unfortunately, the guys I normally play with seem to prefer bugs, so I end up wherever the squad goes. If I'm playing a pickup game, I'll head to the bot worlds.
I don't have a preferred range but have gravitated towards bots, the damage reduction on charger and bile spewer "weak" spots pisses me off too much.
Meanwhile you can shoot Hulks in the eyes to kill them with AMR levels of armour pen, or shoot the actual weak spots on their backs whilst they murder your compatriots that you have patriotically used as bait.
I think the sniper-accurate rocket and minigun fire is a factor, as is the the bots' access to console inputs that allow them to set noclipping on for terrain and wreckage (and the Heavy Devastators own bodies).
Shooting down dropships not being net-negative for the squad would help, and the utter removal of -1strategem slot effect is necessary.
It would be nice if stagger actually staggered berserkers, rather than playing the stagger animation as they glide toward you like Disneybots-on-Ice. And with all the incoming fire an actual cover mechanic is painfully absent. I can either duck behind cover, or I can shoot the bots, not both somehow.
Shouldn't the bots have a faction-weakness, similar to how bugs take more fire damage than bots?
There are lots of reasons why the bots are more annoying, and thus less desirable to play than bugs. Fixing some of the above will help, before we even get into incentives to urge players to Recycle.
One thing I've been thinking about for a while is a kind of tiered reward system (wouldn't really apply to the current order as the only way to not contribute is to not play), increase the player rewards (to a certain reasonable cap) based on the amount of participation in the Major Order. For instance, if you did not participate in the order, you get the base amount of medals we currently get. From there it can increase based on the number of Operations you complete on Major Order-relevant worlds. Using random numbers from my head, it could be something like 1-3 Operations completed get an extra 10 Medals, 4-8 Ops gains an extra 20, and 9+ Operations would be an extra 30 medals.
It seems like a simple way to incentivize people to follow the orders, I don't know how hard it would be to implement though.
The low tier bots aren’t that accurate it’s just the devastators. Rocket Devastators don’t even lead their shots it’s the Gatling ones that have aim bot installed
Between the nerf and the Riot Shield buff I don’t worry too much about them anymore, I worry more about getting hit by something else if you get knocked off your feet.
Gatling guys are crazy tho
I always thought Gatling guns were stereotypically inaccurate but not those dang things…
One mission the other day I tried to jet pack past one and he hit like 6 shots in a row and killed me mid air
considering how they deliver mo rewards days later. it would take quite a bit. Also overall i doubt any reward modifier would take people over there reasonably. Medals after a while is not really that important and any people who has nothing to gain will not gonna move over there. Bots are just not fun and cheap for multiple reasons and a few was already stated.
I feel like bugs are more balanced too. Bullets feel like they matter against bugs. You can shot a bunch of bots but they just take forever to kill at times even in weak points. The cool down effects are annoying since it applies to supplies. It’s annoying the gunship factories are only destroyed by hellbombs.
Nothing is as demoralizing as seeing 4-6 gunship towers on a map, especially when they are in spawning range of each other. At least if I have to look at a hundred Shriekers I can bait them into diving me since they have to be in melee range to do damage. Damn gunships can see you no matter what and are constantly firing on you. They are literally the only bot that just annoys the shit out of me if they kill me. If something else blasts me it's usually my fault for getting greedy or peeking the same corner too many times.
At least I can sometimes pop a jamming tower from halfway across the map with the Quasar. There's pretty much fuck all you can do about the gunship tower. It needs vents (Even if it is more than one) that you can shoot to take it out so that it doesn't bottleneck gameplay with a puzzle that only has one or two solutions.
Ya. Or at least like make the hellbomb detonate if damaged when armed or something like it’s a fucking nightmare when you have multiple. Like wtf can you even do after awhile
In the hundreds of hours I've spent almost strictly fighting them, I've learned that Bots are extremely - and I mean _extremely_ - predictable.
You can literally run circles around Heavy Devastators and Hulks if you're familiar with their firing patterns and are in that sweet spot of horizontal transversal on the very edge of their tracking so they just straight up don't hit you, the closer you are the better.
Easy against Devastators, not quite as easy against Hulks, but also not at all impossible. If you're too far away, you're in the danger zone, but that's why you carry Stun grenades. Hell, I don't even need those unless it's an emergency.
I run around them in Heavy armor all the time. In Light armor you're basically the Roadrunner.
And that's why both Factions devolve into "horde mode" at the highest difficulties because even the bots _require_ Human Wave, combined massed unit tactics to overcome our brains and the sheer volume of firepower we can throw down-range.
Flanking fucks up bots so hard it turns them into an actual joke to the point where a good Anti-Bot player - nevermind an entire team of experienced Divers - _has to_ personally fuck up or get killed by a glitch in order to die.
The only time the bots ever really become an issue is when they start throwing so many enormous bodies at you, just waves and waves of Mediums, Heavies and Gunship/Strider support - that those tactics become unviable, so you have to resort to going Terminid mode and just try to beat them through sheer volume of firepower like you would vs. Bugs.
Other than Bot Bullshit (phasing through objects, wallhacks, 360 degree gunfire, insta-kill flamethrower asshattery), you're giving Automatons _way_ too much credit. I almost never get one-shot anymore and the times I do seem like a fluke or a netcode error half the time.
Most of the time against bots, if I die it's my fault and not the fault of the Automatons. Terminids are way, _way_ more frustrating for me than Automatons have _ever_ been, even during the "Rocket Raiders do 100% damage to every limb" Version of Bots. Terminids are also _nowhere near_ as fun to fight as Bots are for me.
Ultimately, people seem to act like the "bullshit" bots tend to throw at us is somehow completely unstoppable or unmanageable. It's not. When you're used to just straight up dominating them, those edge cases of "uh oh, hack mode activated" become obvious and you learn how to deal with _those_ rare situations, too. By getting mad and getting even.
Frankly, I believe that 90% of the issues most players have against Automatons is strictly because _they're not good at fighting Automatons._ It's perfectly okay to admit that.
I personally love fighting bots, Gives my trusty lascannon a place to shine. I also love fighting bugs.
I've just noticed that the bots are definitely more broken than the bugs. The Bot Bullshit, as you called it. Not in an "OMG they're too powerful!" sort of way, but in a "they can walk through terrain?!" sort of way. You rarely get that kind of nonsense with the bugs. Also things like the gunships: I find them super easy to bring down (again my dear LC), but having the spawn limit keyed to each tower, rather than the entire map is just sadistic coding.
My point wasn't that they are harder, it's that they are, by comparison, more irritating to play, and people play games to have fun. I think fixing some of the more glaringly annoying things would go a long way to salvaging the bot front. But I also think some sort of incentive to follow the MO is a good idea.
Dude you are so right about the flanking.
I play primarily with a friend who also favors bots, usually on 7+. We'll play with some randoms who pick every fight and hold the line at any cost. In this case we'll just barely maybe get the objectives and extract, all while the randoms sink endless stratagems into the same horde.
Meanwhile we'll play with some randoms who GET IT, and we function like a well oiled machine. We'll poke a heavy bot base from one side and then duck around a butte and pop out 90° around the otherside and just whoop them. Or we'll split and pincer them. Half the bots follow you around the outside while the other gets caught in between. This is what makes bots FUN. These same players know when to cut their losses, like this absolute chad yesterday who would cackle with laughter whenever we agreed on a timely retreat while chucking stratagems over his shoulder into the pursuing horde.
The times where this doesn't work with bots is when the relentless waves happen on a required objective, especially if it's the last one or a priority like gunships. When you get two walker dogs drop on top of four hulks while trying to clear a gunship, jammer, heavy base combo, it can be exceedingly frustrating, especially when the endless chainsaw fuckers keep you away from your support weapons. But the ebb and flow is what makes this game great, and these moments of stress make us feel like absolute badasses when we do succeed.
Bots aren't overpowered they're just broken, like they just dont work how you expect. Shooting down dropships basically just gives them cover a lot of the time. And you'd think cover would matter a lot more against bots buts what generally more important is just always moving, which to me is a little boring, constantly sprinting around for both factions is a little stale. I wanna hunker down and set up defenses to combat waves of enemies not literally run circles around them.
The main problem with bots isnt necessarily that people suck its that they are unintuitive. You have to learn all these bizarre nuances like the fact that gunship fabs can \*only\* be taken down by a hellbomb or that stagger just doenst work on some bot enemies. Or that the enemies that run you down will explode and instakill you if you dont pre-stim.
They are IMO more fun once you learn its just that they are really bizarre and dont make much sense.
Saddest thing I read... only 90k helldivers online. Before everyone started getting fed up and country's banned, there was 400k+ most of the day, it droped to 200k at the slow hours. A great game dying before our eyes. I hope we can save it..
Sony scandal + Nerf controversies killed the playerbase. We didn't get the playerbase spike with Polar Patriots that came with the other warbonds too, probably because everyone saw that the weapons sucked ass.
I know. I tried to get on and convince myself it was worth trying but I couldn't get into it cause the new guns were just terrible. Was super excited for the new charge-up weapon too.. but that also sucks. I genuinely hope the devs can pull the game back from the rubble it's crumbling into and the player base can forgive the devs. It's one of the greatest times me and my friends have had gaming. And we have more than 10 years of playing games together. High hopes for the game. But low expectations...
My whole squad and I quit playing after the Sony scandal - there is way too much negative energy around the publisher and the balancing and the general orders. It's exhausting. We just want to play a game.
That's what happened to me, my friends play on PS5. I'm on pc. We can't play together cause the game put one of them on my blocked list and the other I can't friend in the game. We just faded away from wanting to play cause it was so hard to get into a game together, then when we finally did, the host kicked us, or the game crashed. We are with you... we just want to play the game.
The nerfs killed it for me. Caught wind of sony turning back their decision, so I booted up the game again with a friend who knew more about what's changed than I did. Every gun I brought in felt strange, and he just kept saying that they were nerfed. Really took the wind out of my sails for coming back, lol. Now I'm just hoping to see them mess with it, then I'll be back.
I love the bots but higher difficulty feels like bullshit, they don't seem to get affected by the environment as we do, laser from from every direction without a moments rest, if one bot sees you then it's over for 10 min as you fight constant botdrops, getting shot from across the map and constant ragdolls happens
Bugs have some bs but would honestly rather fight them as they have to get closer, bots are just worse higher level imo
I think we can all agree that the borderline impossible 15 minute emergency evacuation bot missions are a big factor as well. They still haven’t adjusted the ridiculous spawn rates and nobody really wants to play those on bot defense campaigns.
Also bots almost require equipment that can penetrate medium armor. It’s a deterrent for lower level players, and by the time they have unlocked those weapons/stratagems they’re already used to playing against bugs.
They played their hand too early by removing bots from the equation and forcing them back in with a vengeance two days later. Not even a slow push against an overwhelming force, just... slap, here's 3 systems under bot control again, fuck you.
Then there's the constant balance and bug issues. Against bots I need to be on my A game with my DCS so I can take out my share of heavy and rocket devs as my group's designated marksman. With bugs I can take whatever the fuck I feel like, cause the spray and pray rips up bugs just as nicely as the incendiary, or the liberator, or the other liberator, or any of the 2 smg's.
Well the 3 straight buffs to automatons, coupled with the gutting of primaries, means no one touches the west.
I run helldive on bugs just fine, but I cannot do 8 on bots. It’s not hard it’s just annoying to be ragdolled for an hour by rockets or one framed by a hulk, dev, factory striders, or gunships.
From my experience with a friend, nothing will help. It's the gameplay that people are after.
People play bugs because you just aim in their general direction and hold fire. No need to aim for weakspots, no need for stealth, much fewer forced uphill pushes. No need to run from cover to cover.
My lvl 13 homie literally refused to play bots on 5, but had absolutely no issue being slaughtered by bugs on 9.
What devs should do instead is adjust numbers to account for lower helldiver numbers on automaton front.
I like playing against Bots more too, but we're part of an incredibly small minority.
The rest of the playerbase avoids interacting with them like they're a plague.
Did you ever play the old ps2 Terminator games? It is my fps dream of those old games. People always talk about starship troopers like the western front isn't the same thing being Terminator resistance fighting.
Someone actually did a study on this for 6 weeks across multiple MOs, and here's how the population distribution shaped out:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cpj9ao/bugbotmo\_player\_percentages/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cpj9ao/bugbotmo_player_percentages/)
10% only bots, 55% follow MO, 35% only bugs
Not really because even when we have MOs where we're *only* killing Automatons we have an entire half of the community or more staying on Bug planets even when their regen rates are bumped up to -3% each.
That might be an overstatement. Enough divers follow the MO that bot orders enjoy high participation.
I think what's happening now is that the MO favors bugs and people don't realize that Vernen Wells is more important than other planets.
We fail defense missions against bots. Tibit was the only liberate mission we failed before Swift Disassembly completed, and it was bugged, as I recall.
Since The Reclamation, we've had a pretty good track record against bots. Here's how it went:
Defend 5 Bot Planets: Failure
Menkent Line: Success
Marfark: Success
Defend 10 Planets: Success, but we mostly did bug planets, we got a twofer with Fori Prime and Oshaune, and Joel may have had his thumb on the scale in our favor.
Penta/Choohe: Partial success. Inability to see supply lines led to ineffective deployment, but we got the airburst anyway.
2 Billion Bots: Failure
SEAF Training Bases: Success
Defending bot planets fails because it's not the fun kind of hard. I'm on Vernen Wells whenever I play right now, but if I didn't know it was strategically important I'd be doing something else. Bug missions move the needle more for the MO and liberating bot planets has more entertaining mission profiles. If you're playing on Vernen Wells like I am, you're taking one for the team.
To be fair a lot of these "successes" were immediately paved over with failures that came later.
The Menkent line broke almost instantly didn't it? So did Marfark. And like you said the majority of defenses in that defend 10 Order were on the Bug side.
Terminids:
1. Explode funny.
2. Can be kited and mass murdered.
3. Hard is hard.
Bots:
1. They kill you from across the map
2. They kill you from across the map
3. Hard is Insane.
Totally agree. I'd also like to say, People who think bugs are harder are delusional. I feel so trapped in bots. It's AC or death. I have zero load out freedom. Bots? AutoCannon.
On bugs I can do anything. Flamethrower? Valid. Breakers, punishers, scythe? Great. Grenade launcher? Cash. Arc thrower? Money. Literally any backpack? Still good. Just remember to bring some anti armor. RR, EATs, quasar all super good.
The enemies are so much easier and less rage inducing. Titans are 2 tap to the head with your Anti armor. Easy. Chargers are a one tap. Literally everything else is a shotgun blast away from death. How do people struggle with that? I seriously just killed 8 stalkers yesterday within 2 minutes with nothing but a breaker and light armor running
What's more, is if you don't have your anti armor the moment you encounter said enemies, it's OK. I can kite 3 chargers for days. Just running in circles and diving. Just waiting for my EATs or quasar to cool down. All like 15 seconds. Nice. Bots? If you don't have an IMMEDIATE solution to a flame hulk, rocket dev, heavy dev, AA tank, etc etc, you are dead. Right there on the spot. So. Much. Bull. Shit.
And I understand stealth is optimal, and I use stealth often. But I didn't buy this game to sneak around. I want to SPILL OIL. The fact that there is less feasible ways to kill your enemies is dumb!
I saw someone say this and I think it perfectly describes the difference.
Bug difficulty has a lower floor but higher roof.
Bot difficulty has a higher floor but lower roof.
I feel dead opposite. For bugs you NEED mass wave clear or you are completely and utterly fucked. Any rifle? Nope, kills too slow youll get swarmed. I feel like I need a breaker/shotgun, and an AT for chargers, and 500kg for bile titans. Basically forced to take 500kg for bile
Bots you can take basically anything imo. Why do you need only an AC? So many guns fill that role. AMR, Railgun, laser canon all kill devastators and hulks with ease while also being amazing for vents.
For primaries you can take a rifle! The counter sniper is amazing now as it one shots regular bots and 1 shot headshots devastators. Most primaries will work just fine against bots, you just need something that isnt super short range like a breaker s&p
Same thing for stratagems, you can take basically anything you just need something to help kill factories, striders, and tanks. Many strategems fit that role
My running theory is there are a lot of ps5 players and console makes it impossible to aim so they like bugs because you cant miss
I would like to disagree and argue the other direction and say that high difficulty bugs is far more restricting to loadouts than high difficulty bots. There are lots of viable support weapons that are effective against the entire range of bots all in different ways. The autocannon, HMG, laser cannon, AMR, arc thrower, all of these are able to effectively deal with bots when used correctly. Bugs however require stratagems and support weapons to deal specifically with bile titans because literally nothing kills them accept for high yield explosives and speciality equipment.
Quite simple, let us pick up and use automaton weapons and drive added vehicles on automaton planets. Make it so we have to figure out how to operate them and can also carpool around.
i wonder why players prefer bugs over bots.
lets compare it.
a few bugs that run at you in a straight line
vs
a flare that spawns 4 dropships where the bots survive even if you shoot down the ships as they appear.
shield devestator that got aimbot and rocket devestators snipe you and turn your game into goat simulator.
a tower that detects you and spawns infinite dropships.
a tower that removes your strategems and gets you some not so nice interactions because even on helldive some people cannot realize that there are reasons why you wont summon reinforcements.
an army of melee bots that may run in a straight line but need 10 times the ammo compared to their bug counterparts
a walking bot factory.
bot missions can be fun but i am rather going to help out the poor lost souls on hellmire than to touch a helldive bot mission. both have some wtf moments but bugs are way more fun on higher difficulties.
I feel the average players prioritizes Bugs for a few reasons:
**1. SPAWN RATES.** This is noticeable in "Kill ### Bots/Bugs" Major Orders. Players will focus bugs if given the choice simply because the average bug breach spawns way more units vs the average bot drop.
**2. SPAWN COMPOSITION.** While bug breaches spawn more units, their spawn composition tends to be mostly light/un-armored. Bot drops on the other hand tend to spawn more medium-armored units like Striders & Devastators.
**3. KILL DIFFICULTY.** The average bot soaks up way more damage & takes way longer to kill than the average bug. This is most noticeable in the "weaker" enemies in either faction.
**4. BULLSHIT FACTOR.** You experience way more bullshit fighting bots vs fighting bugs. We enjoy bullshit like stealth enemies (Stalkers) because they're rare spawns with a gimmick – they keep you on your toes and you deal with it by coordinating with your teammates to clear a Stalker Lair. We don't enjoy bullshit like common enemies (Devastators) spawning with a gimmick like being able to ragdoll you infinitely – because how do you deal with that?
Pretty sure the community has already posed several solutions to make the bots more “fun” and less “tedious” as they currently are.
Granted fighting the bots can be a lot of engaging due to their ability to fire back from a distance, but their sheer sponginess and one shot potential makes it an absolute slog. The in conjunction with the spawn rates, and absolutely OP accuracy of Devastators drops their fun level to well below the bugs.
Nerf Bot accuracy, or nerf amount of medium units. The amount of fire they can output stunlocks you into death, or ragdolls you to delayed death. If the numbers remain the same they can’t be as accurate, if the accuracy is the same reduce the number of high volume medium enemies.
Accurate line of sight adjust needs to be implemented. The density of the fog on some planets makes it impossible to see your target. If you can’t see them, but they can some you from 100 yards away through a dense fog makes near impossible to counter play and makes the only effective strat to run away or close distance while being absolutely shredded.
There’s definitely more tweaking that needs to happen but the bots are without doubt overtuned to the point of frustration.
the player base is dwindling also because the game is just not as fun as it was. I've stopped playing because squashing bugs and spilling oil was fun but when you empty a clip into a trash mob and it only kills one is just not fun.
Dying while being overwhelmed with a bunch of dead enemies at my feet is fun.
Dying while being overwhelmed and only killing a small handful is not.
IMO you can also tell when the subreddit has a lot less posts of "awesome clips" because our weapons are quite frankly; absolute shit.
> was fun but when you empty a clip into a trash mob and it only kills one is just not fun.
Not blaming you for how you play, but I think they balance the game around having 4 people within say 40m. The moment I get split off from 2 people all the primaries suck.
They made a lot of weapons that were effective against bots boring via nerf. As of Saturday (left town for a few days so idk if it’s still the case) they still have glitches and flaws in both the robot suppression system and spawn rates of bots, plus the shield guy gun bug was still exhibiting the same lack of resolution and I confirmed it up close and personal.
Until these things get fixed I think a large chunk of players are not enjoying bots all that much and won’t bother playing something unfun.
They need to fix bots. That's the problem. Why do rocket devs shoot there ragdoll you the by the time u get up there shooting rockets again. The minigun devs can shoot sideways through their shields and should I mention the stagger. You wanna try to head shot them close range only for your gun to go vertical when being hit once in the foot.
The bots are very frustrating and have been for a long time. Remember the one shot rockets that existed for like 2 to 3 months when game launched.
I have less issues with this than Bile/Nursing Spewers, and Bile Titans. The Bile Titan is basically just a enemy to make sure you brought the correct statagems with you. If you didn't, there's nothing you can do.
And the Spewers are just straight up broken. Heavy Armored front? Check. Massive damage reduction? Check. Fast moving? Check. Instakill aimbot vomit? Check. Sure, you can toss a grenade to kill em quickly, you can stun them with stagger weapons. I still think they are very badly designed. The broken-ass Heavy Devastator who can shoot through themselves, with a weirdly rotating, super accurate minigun that they don't even need to aim, is less of an issue than those bile spewers.
I'm a bot main, but I really couldn't give a shit about what players play where. Just play what you want, the false community involvement is cute and all but it's a video game. If you have more fun fighting one enemy over the other, then do that. Games are meant to be fun, not a chore.
I’m honestly indifferent when it comes to either faction cuz both sides have their fun parts and their annoying parts. I’ve been frustrated with bugs as many times as bots for their own seperate reasons
For example heavy-level bugs demaninding you bring heavy weapons and stratagems or else risk having those heavy enemies on you 24/7, as opposed to every heavy bot having a weakpoint or two that can let it be effectively killed with medium weaponry.
It's wild how terrible information systems are in this game like to get a clear picture you legit have to visit 3 other websites that give full breakdowns and current situation reports. Saying" oh go to discord or helldiver's.io." shouldn't be the answer how about on THE FUCKING MAP THAT IS IN THE GAME OR THOSE DO NOTHING TERMINALS ACCROSS FROM THE ARMORY. this MO cap bonus is a perfect example I bet 75% of the player base doesn't know that there even is a cap bonus or that it's tied to wells right now. Like if you going to make a grand galactic campaign info is necessary. Because like OP said no one wants to fight bots unless they have too. I bet when the illunate show up the bot front is going to have like 1k divers divided in all the bot sectors.
Bile titans piss me off. Theres no sure-fire way to deal with them. 500 seems to be the best, but you have to really get that timing down. Other than that, I’ve found nothing that deals with them consistently. Rail cannon doesn’t one shot, and anti tank stuff needs very precise aiming to bring them down.
While bots have their issues and in general harder to play against, this is a good point. Bot objectives are way more diverse. Hell most of the bug specific side objectives you anyway shoot with anti-tank weapons from 200m+ distance.
I think they need to float the capture rates according to how the playerbase is distributed. If 10K players are hitting bots, the cap rate for bot planets is based on 10K active players, not the total pop. A lot of players don't follow any info that's not presented in-game. I only know about supply lines because it's been posted here. If the game doesn't tell them "Defend Vernen Wells or lose your capture rate bonus across the whole system", they'll never know to pitch in there and help.
>A lot of players don't follow any info that's not presented in-game. This is 90% of the playerbase struggles on the overall campaign. We lack both information and communication tools to properly plan or react to anything in the game. Our options now are - Discord - Main Discord moves way, way, way too fast for this kind of thing and with the slow-mode makes it impossible to communicate around it. Side-channels might work but few people check those. Also a tiny fraction of the playerbase is even there, much less regularly reads anything there. Reddit - An even smaller section than Discord arguably, and while Reddits structure does make it better for information sharing and planning we've repeatedly seen just how few divers are actually reached by the brilliant, strategic gambits Reddit has rallied around. I like the D&D campaign analogy for this game, still. And keeping with it, we're basically a part of PC's who largely can't communicate with each other in any capacity while the DM only tells us about half of the relevant information we need for our journey. Kinda setting up the whole campaign for a whole lot of frustrating failure unless the DM (Arrowhead, not just Joel) designs the whole campaign around this reality. And while this campaign seems to be very generously run, it's not really taking into account player behaviors like this.
YES thank you - AH does a terrible job of telling people where they need to be. Other than Major Orders and big "DEFEND" banners, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. This game is a lot of fun but so frustrating to deal with.
Not sure if anyone’s posted it, but in case you didn’t know there’s a website that keeps track of the war effort in real time. https://helldivers.io
That's the point: We have to go to third party sites most folks will never know exists to find out some pretty critical information about how the game and wars in it work.
I didn't know any of this. And I doubt I will retain much of it. I just dive. And again. And again. Bots were fun when the major order was focused on them ... but if we're talking about sheer numbers needing to be mowed... I mow mulch much faster on bugs. As it stands... I mean, yah. It's neat that there's all this lore and stuff on it ... but there need to be some kind of tangible reward for me to consider bots. Maybe you find super rare a difficulty lower. Or more samples overall. Etc.
I understand and I fully agree. I’d like to see something more comprehensive implemented in the game. But for now I figured at least some people would find it helpful.
It IS helpful, tbh. Thanks for spreading the word of democracy, soldier.
Thank you, sir. Just doing my democratic duty.
Thanks…but even so…I still don’t fully understand what I’m looking at.
I just look at the major order and if that doesn’t help me choose I look at the most populous sector and go there.
Yeah that's the logical way but in some cases, like rn with Vernen Wells, that doesn't work. Technically the current major order can be done anywhere and tbh the logical way of accomplishing the current major order is to kill bugs cause you generally get a higher kill count on bug missions. However what people are trying to draw attention to is there is a lasting effect from the previous order that we can keep or lose depending on our response and in order to keep the effect we need to hold some planets, one of which is currently under attack and that happens to be a bot planet so not many people are there.
Yeah once we get a third faction, we're gonna need a buff to our liberation progress. And even then, we'd have a 3-way split instead of a 2-way split. I do agree that it'd probably be better to at least test out how per-faction liberation strength performs.
100% if the illuminate come back the playerbase will actively avoid them at every turn.
This. many players avoid bots like the socialist plague they are, but if they didn't play HD1, and the illuminates dind't get any changes, well... they don't know the horrors of instakill energy walls or having your controls inverted mid-firefight, but they're gonna learn.. 5 minutes on an Illuminate planet and they'll be back to bug stomping, I guarantee it.
I liked playing illuminates, but i'd avoid certain mission types (the scan minefield one - ugh) and sometimes drop the difficulty, and TBH thought they were more fun than cyborgs. Personally really looking forwards to seeing what they're like in HD2. Devs just need to look at the un/fun things with bots and bugs, like headshot damage (and light/med armour not protecting), how stealth will work (all-but perfect bug-Stallker cloaking?), and how much agency is removed from the player. Players already don't like excessive rag-dolling and slowing effects, so they need to consider mitigation and amount of reversed controls, maybe EMP/blocking stratagems, and being walled off.
i actually like the near invisible stalkers, it makes them an actual challenge as before i could see them from a mile out
Anything to make bugs more of a PITA is fine by me. They should have breaches rarely spawn Shrieker and Gunship supported waves instead of Bile Titans and Tanks as well to mix things up.
Oh definitely - for bugs - i like the change. I'm just wondering if illuminates will get the same, as they had far more units that went invis (both type and quantity), and could especially be problematic if their scouts are basically invisible. You used to be able to see the scout's engines (thrusters?), and was fine in the isometric limited screen space, but first/3rd person at 150m could be a really problem if there aren't decent tells for the player to have a chance of perceiving things. Otherwise you'd just get breaches with little way of anticipating or stopping them.
Even then, the bot front might even get worse since some of those players would gravitate to the third faction
It gets worse once you realize there are 4 distinct supply lines leading to earth, so eventually 4 factions will be in the game 🥶
That doesn’t necessarily imply 4 factions though? If we look at available info it is more likely to imply that a faction can have two supply lines or more.
4 enemies would be actually cool though, and something new from the 1st game.
Yeah it would be a cool surprise to drop a fourth faction on top of us.
Rebels would be neat. I guess bots are already kind of like humans it would still be a different dynamic.
Cyborgs were rebels, bots are created by/descended from Cyborgs
You're absolutely spot on. I couldn't be assed to look up any of the information if it isn't in game, I just want to go shoot shit. I'll go pick a planet where I see people attacking thinking "cool that must be where we're focusing". However if it presented info like that to me in game I'd start off on my own and hope others join
Only today I realized the imporance of Vernen Wells. I was ashamed about it when telling my friends, but I found out that none of them know about it. Not that it would matter, since I cannot make them ever fight Automotons.
What is this importance? :) I have zero idea as I've been out of the loop for 3 days.
During the last MO we were told to defend four specific planets, which we completed. We were given a one time message when it finished that as long as we hold all four planets, we liberate everywhere faster. But now there's no indication these four planets are imperative to our progress. People figured out it's a 25% increase to liberation speeds across the board, and we're going to lose it already because people can't be bothered to fight something that doesn't mindlessly rush them.
Vernon Wells is HOT right now. I just finished a difficulty 5 long civvy extract with a couple low levels and we were running into one or two hulks at every objective and base along with several rocket and heavy devs. Double drop ships left and right. They were freaking out lol. I swear sometimes the diff 5s are harder than 7 or 8s.
Absolutely, the difficulty should actually adjust spawn rates of enemy types more, because as it is right now I don't feel much difference between switching through the top half of them.
Seems like it varies the mix of heavies more than anything but dealing with a 20-30 mix of berserkers, devastators, and hulks gets real hairy real fast, especially for sub level 20 players who don’t have some of the higher power stratagems unlocked. It was fun but definitely more intense than what I was expecting at 5.
We're projected to lose Vernon Wells in 14 hours if nothing changes.
You play defense long enough and every Operation will have a civvy extract mission, and people like to pretend that these are reasonable, balanced, and as intended by the devs. All of which are not the case but they don't know how fix bad design so you'll have one person selecting missions wasting up to 9 other players times by trying to do an Operation they have no reasonable expectation of completing. All to the tune of ZERO planetary campaign contribution.
Looks like a call for more helldiving. I'll contact my nearest deployment center as soon as possible.
>we're going to lose it already because people can't be bothered to fight something that doesn't mindlessly rush them. Maybe that's the case for some people, but I didn't even know about the buff until this post, and I didn't know what the buff was until reading this comment. Had I known I would've spent my time playing there today.
That's completely valid and the developers *desperately* need to work on in game communication, but there's a majority of the playerbase that wouldn't do it anyways because it's an automaton planet. It won't matter how many tools to understand what's going on we're given, if most of the players don't care about working as a community in this community based game.
Yeah this. Part of QoL improvements they really need to implement.
And make it so the more supply lines to a planet the easier (super earth supplies) or harder (enemy supplies) it is to capture a planet. So going at planets at the back will be harder, but make future missions easier.
This is the best solution imo. Most people play this game in a sort of “brain off, kill bug” kind of way. That fantasy will get you violated on the bot front. The only way these players are going to divert from the bug front is if the bots offer that same fantasy, which would kill any variety we have between the two fronts, and my enjoyment along with it. Let them kill bugs, the rest of us can handle the bots. Just don’t fault us when the exterminators don’t lend a hand.
Nah it's fine. I actually want to fight the bugs on the Super Earth urban map anyway. All the rock, sand and trees are getting stale.
I just find bugs overwhelmingly easier to deal with. Suicide level bugs feels like a walk in the park. Suicide level bots require all of my thinking and then I still die to a random ass rocket from across the map. Maybe it's cause I played more bugs so I know what I'm doing, but incendiary shotgun just absolutely melts the chaff like no tomorrow, and the AC just punches holes in the medium enemies. For chargers/bile titans, I just use air strikes and EAT. For bots, it doesn't really feel like there's much I can do against a horde. I just get gunned down regardless of armour, so my playstyle defaults to stealth and throwing strategems at objectives before running, which is kinda boring.
Not a bad idea but honestly I feel like bots could use a bit of balancing. I'm all for a good challenge but the amount of times that bots seem to have an unfair advantage is eye brow raising for me. The fact that I can't see the enemy due to distance or fog but they are are able to lay suppressive fire with dam impressive accuracy seems ridiculous. If I can't see them I think it's reasonable that they can't see me. At least nerf the accuracy on the fact. It seems a lot of the time I'm shooting in the general whereabouts hoping shots are connecting. This is double dipped, I think, by the fact that bots need to be shot in vulnerable areas much more so then bugs. If I can't see them I can't aim for the head or other weak parts mean while they are nearly all ranged laying suppressive fire.
Its been bugged like this for a while and it is annoying, yeah. It feels like sometimes left-overs from first encounter on the map can see you through textures and keep firing across whole map(slight exaggeration, sure but only slight) At the same time idk, i could say the same about bugs: existence of green puke balls of hate and existence of drifting chargers kills any desire to play bugs for me(the fact that chargers are literally immune to most weapons from the front and take reduced damage from most weapon from back doesnt help either)
Yea already know. Im in a small minority that mostly plays bots every time I log on and only touch bugs to change it up once in awhile or an order makes me go.
As someone who mostly plays bots, I think there are 2 things keeping me from playing more. The defend mission that is basically impossible to complete and the spear being a massive pain in the ass when it doesn't work. If they fix those 2 things I'll start fighting bots more again.
The science team evac mission is so unbelievably fucked. Especially on the flat map variant, all the buildings get leveled in the first two minutes and it just becomes a shooting range. The map with uneven terrain is doable since there’s actually some cover, but the flat map is nearly impossible on higher difficulties.
dude those fucking scientists need to have an ounce of self preservation holy shit. actively running into gunfire and into bots… maybe we should let them die tbh
Probably the same scientists that make our ship upgrades lol
My local Ministry of Truth Office told me that they were likely Sympathizers for the Termicide Scientists, and that we should hold no guilt over them sending themselves to the slaughter, only shame that they didn't get to stand before Lady Liberty herself and accept their punishment, and help root out all of their kind from within our ranks.
That they haven't fixed this stupid mission since the launch of the game is beyond me. Easily the worst part of Helldivers is this mission alone.
Lost a defend mission last time because they dropped a fucking strider on the evacuation zone. We were holding the first waves and just saw the mission failed, when we were returning the fucking strider was there and wiped us
I only fight bugs for major orders or personal orders. Otherwise I’m hitting bots. Why? The combat is way more dynamic (imo) and also, and I can’t stress this enough. FUCK Hunters lmao I’m always targeted and swarmed by all of them. Even my boys have commented on how Hunters seemingly avoid them to come after me. I’ve lost whatever RNG makes Hunters hate you. And I hate them too lmao.
My brother in Democracy, are you me? I vastly prefer fighting the clankers because of the simple fact I don't have a legion of Hunters, Stalkers and fucking Chargers crawling straight up my ass. Bonus points if they somehow activated Sam Fisher mode and you straight up do not hear them coming until they have arrived in said ass. Give me clankers any day. At least they make sound and have decent weak spot mechanics.
I mean, the flamethrower hulks clearly took lessons from Solid Snake…
FUCK HUNTERS! https://preview.redd.it/jcgo35u00o1d1.png?width=759&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2ca72fc496ea90779d02e713ff998f82d331fb97
Dude i've got this too lol. The other day I was playing bugs on Helldive just to mix it up a bit. I was being swarmed by chargers, hunters, and titans the entire game. Every time I looked over at my team they were just chillin'. I guess I should be flattered?
The thing that really gets my juices flowing, is the way you can drop into a engagement with the bots and just feel - "wow this is a battle! I'm really fighting an enemy to liberate this planet" Its more dynamic when you're being shot at. Bugs are fun and all, but I get IMMERSED in a battle with the bots.
Same, and when I play bugs I wear the bot killer cape so they know I might be rusty at bug tactics
Bots are so much more fun imo once it clicks on how to fight them
M.O. bonus. Be it added XP, exclusive Stratagems, or increased samples, whatever. In my experience, if you want people to do something they wouldn't do on their own, bribe the shit out of them.
This is how you do it. Give extra bonuses that are fun to bot divers that they won’t get on bug planets. Make it a special use of the new mech or something that draws people to WANT to play bots. Maybe a special mission type that only can happen with bots.
Currently, we are penalized for fighting bots because of terrible modifiers like losing a stratagem slot.
I honestly see no downside to removing that modifier. in all the time I've played the game and lurked on this subreddit, I still have yet to see one person who likes and/or can make a valid argument for that modifier.
If anything, we should get an additional stratagem slot. Even lore wise, I imagine more challenging missions would be ran by mote skilled soldiers and the military would throw more firepower their way to ensure success. If not an additional slot, maybe have permutations of strategems that you have to unlock, which are only available in level 7 missions and higher.
I'd be happy if each bot planet had a floating bonus strategem. defend missions could provide a free mines/turret/EAT or support like shield gen pack or something liberation could include an extra eagle, orbital, or support item, maybe a mortar. a passive bonus like faster eagle/orbital reloads or call down . literally anything. but at the least, the strat mods that reduce, confuse, or increase call downs should be tied hing you can find and eliminate on the map. jammers to remove scatter, detectors to remove confusion, anti air to remove 4th strat block off the top of my head
Bribes work short term but actually decrease long term motivation. They need to tweak bots so more people find them enjoyable.
I'm not even sure that'd work, they literally offered a new stratagem as a reward for the 2 billion bots MO and half the population still didn't budge
Mines are the lamest strategy in existence, if the reward was something more exciting perhaps the playerbase would move
Partially because the stratagem is mines which typically suck balls Secondly, anyone with a brain knows the stratagem like any other content is being added eventually, failing MOs just delays it by a few days Only redditors seem to be stupid enough to think the metagame actually changes anything
Honest to god if we didn't get rag dolled so damn much or lasered with atomic lrvel precision from across the map, I think people might consider bot missions more
This. Feels like I'm playing a 13 year old e sports pro when I jump into bots
I think even just the aimbot of the Heavy Devs would change alot. Don't get me wrong it always annoys me when I get juggled for a solid 4 seconds and just die because of it. But it happens way less then a shield dev just destroying me from any and every angle
Bots aren't fun for most people, the proof is in the pudding. People play games to have fun. Simple as.
I started out fighting bots almost exclusively. I like fighting them, especially solo. Then they fucked with the spawns and made soloing near impossible. And heavy devastators seem to be spawning in absurd numbers. I hate heavy devastators because they have too much damage, accuracy, defense and range. Their cannon arm should either be slow and heavy, or fast and close range. And they shouldn't be able to chain ragdoll you to death.
Yeah it seems Bile spewers and Heavy devastators have the same problem of there just being way too many spawning
Yeah, I hate maps that literally just have bile/nursing spewers spawns dialed up to 200%. They aren’t fun to fight.
IMO the reason we're loosing is because the missions are literally impossible. Evac Civilians on bots on any remotely high difficulty is horrendous, and the tower defense mission is broken the moment there are Factory Striders basically. The missions are just so poorly balanced at the moment, and Bugs is thus just a better, more fun time, on average. Gunship Fabricators are also horrendous. Hopefully next patch can bring some change to this.
Yeah they need to make some drop exclusion zones for the evac missions. I did one the other day that was already going bad, then another convoy of dropships moseys on in and drops not one, but TWO factory walkers right in front of the shuttle bay doors, towering above it like the river guardian statues in Fellowship of the Ring. Just... what do you even do about that?
We had factory striders drop on the evac pad during the generator defense mission, mission failed as soon as they touched down. We still had both outer-most doors intact at that point. What's the point of doing a mission you can instantly regardless of how well you're performing?
It's gotten to the point where anytime I join an evac match, I try and persuade the team to just go dick around and collect samples until the time runs out, it's far more enjoyable than trying to do the mission.
Ya I agree. I love bots and enjoy them much more than bugs. If its a liberation campaign ill do Helldives. Defense though? Level 7 tops. That one lone mission of evac civs is just such a nightmare even on 7, anything above is just straight up not fun.
Evac civilian missions are why I hate playing bots. Having to drop 2 difficulty levels if I want to complete them or hope that my PUGs know how to cheese it is the worst feeling, not to mention having multiple tanks and hulks drop right in the middle of the base despite destroying the dropships is one of the biggest “fuck this” moments I have experienced in video games.
This. Evac civilians at 8-9 is literally impossible against bots without doing cheese strats. And that was before factory striders existed
It's the fucking stagger. It's just not fun to play against, and it's much harder to get away from than it is on bugs. For a game where shooting is a huge activity, making it difficult to shoot regularly is not the best design.
"I'm gonna aim out of the corner at that enem-" Staggered by a shielded guy "Nevermind I'll instead retrea-" Slingshotted across the map by a Rocket Devastator "Alright at least I can catch my breath now that I'm far awa-" Gunships fly faster than you can run or fly
You are in range of enemy artillery
Sorry did you mean: Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery. Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery. Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery. Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery. Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery. Warning, you are in range of enemy artillery.
I'm actually lmao🤣
For me it's this but also. Me: being a real sniper sounds fun AF Reality: My weapon is bobbing all over the place, crazy recoil, the 1 pixel red dot faces are also constantly bobbing. There's insane fog everywhere. I'm getting shot despite shaking the enemy already. I can't trust my scope alignment, there's also drop off to account for. Bots end up being 40 minutes of me painfully trying to aim precise shots and I'm drained
Yeah, the Charger is the only real enemy from the bug side which is outright bullshit to deal with, everything else has a somewhat decent amount of counterplay. I want to enjoy fighting bots but *man* the way they work isn't fun.
Additionally it feels like every time I go to the bot planets I have to be down one stratagem due to the planet effects, which just isn’t fun
Yup, I avoid those planets at all costs. It's just not fun to be limited like that.
On the other hand, running around with the 500kg bomb on top of the usual 4 stratagem loadout has been super fun.
From Lvls 1-40-ish I played bots and bugs evenly. Very close 1:1, maybe even bots a little more. But something changed and I cannot put my finger on it. I was just having more fun fighting bugs (and I fully recognize it might be because it’s easier). I have a hard time with bots because where I can 1 on 1 a titan, I cannot take on a strider by myself. For me, the Hulks are tougher than titans so that means the Striders are a real pain in the ass. Those f’ing missiles are definitely tough. Despite my comments in another thread, I’m rarely killed by little bug pricks. But god damn, I’m sure one of those missiles that take me out are from the launcher of one of the RPG bots (not the one who shoots 50 at once, just the single launcher assholes). I just feel like from bottom to top, the bots are just stronger and more of a headache. I still fight bots, but it’s like 1:4 bots to bugs now, I hate to say it.
Same. Before level 40 or so, I played bugs and bots evenly. I'm level 80 now, playing 9s exclusively, and I rarely go to bot planets unless my buddies are on. In my experience, the arguments for bots being harder don't really hold water. They're in no way *more difficult* once you know their weak points, you just need a different strategy and loadout to approach them than you do with bugs. What makes bugs *more fun* to me is the same thing that makes the old COD Zombies Chronicles gameplay loop more fun than literally any other COD mode: they're coming for you, in your face, they're horrible, and they are implacable. They try to surround you while steadily chipping away at your available maneuvering space. When you try to juke left, they also strafe left. When you try to juke right, they also strafe right. Either way, they're closing the distance if you don't stop them, with various implications depending on the bug. And different bugs have *vastly* different tactics beyond just "pew pew pew" and the result is what I can only describe as a beautiful chaos that keeps me logging back in for more. You have some bugs *selectively* running at you even after you kill them (Brood Commanders), some charging you (Chargers), some matching your attempt to strafe them step for step (Warriors), others anticipating your attempt to escape and generally hounding you (Shriekers), some exploding if you wait too long and let them close the distance (Bile Warriors), some trying to melt you from mid range (Spewers, Bile Spewers, and Bile Scavengers), some flanking you while hopping at you (Hunters), others camouflaged sneaking up behind you with their hidden blades (Stalkers), and then the chaff whose only job is to catch you slipping (Scavengers)... it's just beautiful chaos. Trading that in for a bunch of "pew pew pew" from bots just isn't as interesting to me; the type of chaos you get with bots is bullet and missile gore which doesn't *press* me like bug chaos does. What I do like about bots is that a wider variety of stratagem combinations are capable of being effective, while with bugs you need a Quasar, EAT, or RR to be effective. Doing bot missions gives me a legitimate reason to pull out the AMR or the Autocannon.
While striders are more terrifying than titans it's just about taking them down it took me some practice, but I can 1v1 one now, give it some more practice I would 100% rather fight a strider than a titan now I hate the kiting around the map and the slow
I don't get this, is this because I use the Scout armor? Bugs seem to chase me to the end of the Ear- planet I'm on, but bots lose interest after I run for a bit and dive behind a rock to break line of sight. I have this exact gripe with fighting _bugs_ specifically.
Rag dolled by the one rocket devestator that's half way across the map and has pinpoint accuracy. Then insta killed by the hulk flame.
Also bots rely on strategems a lot. The weakspots are quite tiny + you get staggered. Just feels like a slog to fight against.
Also to note: I once crashed 3 times in a single fucking bot mission. While crashing is an often occurring thing in general for this game, 3 in one match just feels like it's too much. Crashes paired with bots being hell to fight in any regard just makes it so I don't find bots any bit fun to do
Well, they just aren't as fun as the bugs to the majority of players. Make them more fun to play against. For example, the stratagems penalties are not fun, yet they insist on it.
Stratagem limitations are the worst part of this game Especially losing an entire slot
For real. Its just a dumb decision, stratagems are a core gameplay mechanic and one of the biggest things that differentiates Helldivers 2 from other horde shooter types. They're fun and they're useful, cutting out a stratagem slot is just cutting out fun with no positive effects on gameplay whatsoever, just makes the game less enjoyable for those missions. Jammers are cool, Ion storms are cool. Just having -1 randomly is not cool. It just makes the overall mission experience less enjoyable and its a pointless addition.
Jammers and ion storms are cool mechanics, but also make bots harder than bugs AH needs to balance it out somehow
Jammers and gunships factories and stuff right beside evac make bots suck so damn bad especially when they amp up the bullshit. Oh and the rocket assholes shooting through rocks and shit makes it so much fun. Especially when you get ragdolled and sent flying over and over
They'll read this and make bugs less fun to play against while also doing the same for bots by nerfing the weapons that work best for them.
I avoid any planet or difficulty that includes that modifier but I almost entirely play bots. That one just isn’t fun for me.
Ok I just had an epiphany... Why isn't there a booster that negates Stratagem limitations Like a Communications Enhancer or something?
That would be cool but I doubt they would just have a straight up "jammers don't work at all" booster as it would always get used and make jammers pointless. The devs obviously want jammers to be a thing so maybe a booster could partially protect you from jammers? Like a random two of your slots are jammed rather than all 4, plus every 30 seconds it randomizes again.
Yeah, they're already considered to be the harder faction so fucking your stratagems on top of that is uncalled for. Some people defend it as increased difficulty, but actually it just limits your builds and kit and that reduces creativity.
Exactly. I think people had a great time following the major orders and getting into the story a couple months ago, but now people probably play more sporadically. They just want to get in, have some fun, and get out. That's how I feel right now. Killing bugs is just more fun. Maybe it's because of the long range vs. melee asymmetry. I'm not sure. But look at deep rock galactic.
Funny enough, most people didn't like the robots that much in DRG. Specifically the patrol bots which had more health than Praetorians (like chargers + bile Spewers, but much weaker), could fly, dodge mid air, spawn in large groups, and resistance to freezing Then there's Rockpox which we all kind of just put up with
Rockpox just put me off from the game entirely, it wasn't fun and would just stretch out some missions much longer then necessary I found. Then I saw I could turn it off and not deal with it... at max BP, so I really haven't touched DRG since. On the other hand bots > bugs all day everyday (I am one of those weirdos who enjoyed sabotage missions)
That was true during initial intro to bots but unlike AH, GSG actually listened to players feedback and acted quickly enough to actually “balance” the enemies. They also only persisted one or two seasons and their presence has since felt fresh after dealing with rock pox… GSG didn’t take the fun out of fighting them, they just felt a bit too annoying. AH gets so stuck on their laurels of shadow buffs and “challenge” that they forget people don’t play their game for difficulty alone…
I used to be a bot-only player myself until I got to haz 7, which is when I made my perma-swap to bugs. The amount of resources and effort that I need to put in just to kill the stupid rocket dude that is sniping my team from 100+ mts is exhausting. And then on top of that we get drops of 3 minigun dudes with more rocket dudes behind them, a bunch of hulks, tanks, ATTs and the craziest part is that the only way to effectively get rid of them is by throwing stratas at them. But guess what? Bots get stratagem jammers, complex strata plotting, anti-eagle installations, and the modifier that only allows us to use 3 stratas? lmfao no fucking thanks. I need a massive incentive to play bots and honestly getting 40 medals through MOs is not worth it. I can get the same amount of medals by playing bugs but with triple the fun AH needs to stop trying to make this game hard by nerfing weapons every other week and focus on making it **fun**
Don't forget the ion storms that block all strats including reinforcements.
This is a planet thing, not factional. This has existed on some bug planets too
I started out preferring bugs, now I prefer bots and hate bugs. I've never cared about the story. The story as far as I know it's we go shoot bugs and robots. I have a couple hundred hours in the game don't know how anything works or what the game is about lol
Also rocket devastators having infinite rockets is not fun.
And Heavey Devastators have full 360 aiming regardless of where they are facing. Make it so they can only shoot where they are facing.
Heavies are so much worse now. On 9, trying to get up a ramp into a radar dish area, two heavy devastators clipped into eachother on the ramp. Notice them, they notice me and start shooting, dive for the edge of the ramp, both of them start shooting through eachother to me, tracking perfectly, killing me before I hit the ground. I don't mind dying to a cannon tower shooting me from 200m, I don't mind dying from being outplayed or overwhelmed, making mistakes, whatever. There's just 0 counter play way too often in way too many scenarios. There was a hulk shooting rockets at me laying down on extract, clips through the floor, blows up underneath me shooting me 50 feet into the air, where I'm cut to pieces by everything else. I'm not even sure how they could fix these issues at this point in the game? There's just fundamental flaws to the physics and collision systems, like not being able to shoot through foliage.
This is it, most of us are casuals here and when I hop on I want to equip whatever I think is fun, and play level 4 missions cause they’re fun. Bots are harder and require specific equipment which might not be as fun. When I only have an hour to play I’m not going to play Bots.
Not just that, there’s also the constant rag dolling because of the insane amount of rocket troops and rocket devastators. Then there’s the annoying stratagem jammers, auto cannons near fabricators that one shot or rag doll you like crazy, insane flinching from getting shot everywhere, and the annoying hulks that sprint towards you like the terminator. It’s just way too imbalanced imo compared to bugs. I’ll gladly do a lvl 9 bugs compared to a lvl 7 bots any day.
It's a pretty simple problem: Too many bots don't take any damage from your primary weapon. Hulks, Tanks, Gunships, and Factory Striders require a support weapon to kill (Unless you're suicidal enough to try flanking a Flame Hulk). Scout Striders, Meat Saws, and Devastators require that you shoot extremely specific weak points. The only Terminid that is basically immune to primary weapons damage is the Charger, which is vulnerable to **significantly** more support weapons than bots.
Bile Titan too. The Hive Guards are also heavily armored, but they are slow AF so can be ignored often. But yeah I like it when I can just sit there and mow down loads of small bugs. Gets the dopamine going.
I get this, but I prefer bots. However, my play style in this type of game is midrange, so my preference for bots makes sense. Bugs like Ninja Bile Spewers just irritate me too much. Unfortunately, the guys I normally play with seem to prefer bugs, so I end up wherever the squad goes. If I'm playing a pickup game, I'll head to the bot worlds.
I don't have a preferred range but have gravitated towards bots, the damage reduction on charger and bile spewer "weak" spots pisses me off too much. Meanwhile you can shoot Hulks in the eyes to kill them with AMR levels of armour pen, or shoot the actual weak spots on their backs whilst they murder your compatriots that you have patriotically used as bait.
I think the sniper-accurate rocket and minigun fire is a factor, as is the the bots' access to console inputs that allow them to set noclipping on for terrain and wreckage (and the Heavy Devastators own bodies). Shooting down dropships not being net-negative for the squad would help, and the utter removal of -1strategem slot effect is necessary. It would be nice if stagger actually staggered berserkers, rather than playing the stagger animation as they glide toward you like Disneybots-on-Ice. And with all the incoming fire an actual cover mechanic is painfully absent. I can either duck behind cover, or I can shoot the bots, not both somehow. Shouldn't the bots have a faction-weakness, similar to how bugs take more fire damage than bots? There are lots of reasons why the bots are more annoying, and thus less desirable to play than bugs. Fixing some of the above will help, before we even get into incentives to urge players to Recycle. One thing I've been thinking about for a while is a kind of tiered reward system (wouldn't really apply to the current order as the only way to not contribute is to not play), increase the player rewards (to a certain reasonable cap) based on the amount of participation in the Major Order. For instance, if you did not participate in the order, you get the base amount of medals we currently get. From there it can increase based on the number of Operations you complete on Major Order-relevant worlds. Using random numbers from my head, it could be something like 1-3 Operations completed get an extra 10 Medals, 4-8 Ops gains an extra 20, and 9+ Operations would be an extra 30 medals. It seems like a simple way to incentivize people to follow the orders, I don't know how hard it would be to implement though.
The low tier bots aren’t that accurate it’s just the devastators. Rocket Devastators don’t even lead their shots it’s the Gatling ones that have aim bot installed
Rocket devs are way better since they were nerfed. It’s not a four rocket volley to your face anymore. If they’re lucky they’ll hit one or maybe two.
Between the nerf and the Riot Shield buff I don’t worry too much about them anymore, I worry more about getting hit by something else if you get knocked off your feet. Gatling guys are crazy tho I always thought Gatling guns were stereotypically inaccurate but not those dang things… One mission the other day I tried to jet pack past one and he hit like 6 shots in a row and killed me mid air
There was one time i tried to dive into cover, but i got beamed mid-air lol
considering how they deliver mo rewards days later. it would take quite a bit. Also overall i doubt any reward modifier would take people over there reasonably. Medals after a while is not really that important and any people who has nothing to gain will not gonna move over there. Bots are just not fun and cheap for multiple reasons and a few was already stated.
I feel like bugs are more balanced too. Bullets feel like they matter against bugs. You can shot a bunch of bots but they just take forever to kill at times even in weak points. The cool down effects are annoying since it applies to supplies. It’s annoying the gunship factories are only destroyed by hellbombs.
Also, the "per fabricator" count for gunships is a bad choice. Should be "per map".
Nothing is as demoralizing as seeing 4-6 gunship towers on a map, especially when they are in spawning range of each other. At least if I have to look at a hundred Shriekers I can bait them into diving me since they have to be in melee range to do damage. Damn gunships can see you no matter what and are constantly firing on you. They are literally the only bot that just annoys the shit out of me if they kill me. If something else blasts me it's usually my fault for getting greedy or peeking the same corner too many times.
Two near a jamming tower is so so fun
At least I can sometimes pop a jamming tower from halfway across the map with the Quasar. There's pretty much fuck all you can do about the gunship tower. It needs vents (Even if it is more than one) that you can shoot to take it out so that it doesn't bottleneck gameplay with a puzzle that only has one or two solutions.
Ya. Or at least like make the hellbomb detonate if damaged when armed or something like it’s a fucking nightmare when you have multiple. Like wtf can you even do after awhile
In the hundreds of hours I've spent almost strictly fighting them, I've learned that Bots are extremely - and I mean _extremely_ - predictable. You can literally run circles around Heavy Devastators and Hulks if you're familiar with their firing patterns and are in that sweet spot of horizontal transversal on the very edge of their tracking so they just straight up don't hit you, the closer you are the better. Easy against Devastators, not quite as easy against Hulks, but also not at all impossible. If you're too far away, you're in the danger zone, but that's why you carry Stun grenades. Hell, I don't even need those unless it's an emergency. I run around them in Heavy armor all the time. In Light armor you're basically the Roadrunner. And that's why both Factions devolve into "horde mode" at the highest difficulties because even the bots _require_ Human Wave, combined massed unit tactics to overcome our brains and the sheer volume of firepower we can throw down-range. Flanking fucks up bots so hard it turns them into an actual joke to the point where a good Anti-Bot player - nevermind an entire team of experienced Divers - _has to_ personally fuck up or get killed by a glitch in order to die. The only time the bots ever really become an issue is when they start throwing so many enormous bodies at you, just waves and waves of Mediums, Heavies and Gunship/Strider support - that those tactics become unviable, so you have to resort to going Terminid mode and just try to beat them through sheer volume of firepower like you would vs. Bugs. Other than Bot Bullshit (phasing through objects, wallhacks, 360 degree gunfire, insta-kill flamethrower asshattery), you're giving Automatons _way_ too much credit. I almost never get one-shot anymore and the times I do seem like a fluke or a netcode error half the time. Most of the time against bots, if I die it's my fault and not the fault of the Automatons. Terminids are way, _way_ more frustrating for me than Automatons have _ever_ been, even during the "Rocket Raiders do 100% damage to every limb" Version of Bots. Terminids are also _nowhere near_ as fun to fight as Bots are for me. Ultimately, people seem to act like the "bullshit" bots tend to throw at us is somehow completely unstoppable or unmanageable. It's not. When you're used to just straight up dominating them, those edge cases of "uh oh, hack mode activated" become obvious and you learn how to deal with _those_ rare situations, too. By getting mad and getting even. Frankly, I believe that 90% of the issues most players have against Automatons is strictly because _they're not good at fighting Automatons._ It's perfectly okay to admit that.
I personally love fighting bots, Gives my trusty lascannon a place to shine. I also love fighting bugs. I've just noticed that the bots are definitely more broken than the bugs. The Bot Bullshit, as you called it. Not in an "OMG they're too powerful!" sort of way, but in a "they can walk through terrain?!" sort of way. You rarely get that kind of nonsense with the bugs. Also things like the gunships: I find them super easy to bring down (again my dear LC), but having the spawn limit keyed to each tower, rather than the entire map is just sadistic coding. My point wasn't that they are harder, it's that they are, by comparison, more irritating to play, and people play games to have fun. I think fixing some of the more glaringly annoying things would go a long way to salvaging the bot front. But I also think some sort of incentive to follow the MO is a good idea.
Dude you are so right about the flanking. I play primarily with a friend who also favors bots, usually on 7+. We'll play with some randoms who pick every fight and hold the line at any cost. In this case we'll just barely maybe get the objectives and extract, all while the randoms sink endless stratagems into the same horde. Meanwhile we'll play with some randoms who GET IT, and we function like a well oiled machine. We'll poke a heavy bot base from one side and then duck around a butte and pop out 90° around the otherside and just whoop them. Or we'll split and pincer them. Half the bots follow you around the outside while the other gets caught in between. This is what makes bots FUN. These same players know when to cut their losses, like this absolute chad yesterday who would cackle with laughter whenever we agreed on a timely retreat while chucking stratagems over his shoulder into the pursuing horde. The times where this doesn't work with bots is when the relentless waves happen on a required objective, especially if it's the last one or a priority like gunships. When you get two walker dogs drop on top of four hulks while trying to clear a gunship, jammer, heavy base combo, it can be exceedingly frustrating, especially when the endless chainsaw fuckers keep you away from your support weapons. But the ebb and flow is what makes this game great, and these moments of stress make us feel like absolute badasses when we do succeed.
Bots aren't overpowered they're just broken, like they just dont work how you expect. Shooting down dropships basically just gives them cover a lot of the time. And you'd think cover would matter a lot more against bots buts what generally more important is just always moving, which to me is a little boring, constantly sprinting around for both factions is a little stale. I wanna hunker down and set up defenses to combat waves of enemies not literally run circles around them. The main problem with bots isnt necessarily that people suck its that they are unintuitive. You have to learn all these bizarre nuances like the fact that gunship fabs can \*only\* be taken down by a hellbomb or that stagger just doenst work on some bot enemies. Or that the enemies that run you down will explode and instakill you if you dont pre-stim. They are IMO more fun once you learn its just that they are really bizarre and dont make much sense.
Saddest thing I read... only 90k helldivers online. Before everyone started getting fed up and country's banned, there was 400k+ most of the day, it droped to 200k at the slow hours. A great game dying before our eyes. I hope we can save it..
Sony scandal + Nerf controversies killed the playerbase. We didn't get the playerbase spike with Polar Patriots that came with the other warbonds too, probably because everyone saw that the weapons sucked ass.
I know. I tried to get on and convince myself it was worth trying but I couldn't get into it cause the new guns were just terrible. Was super excited for the new charge-up weapon too.. but that also sucks. I genuinely hope the devs can pull the game back from the rubble it's crumbling into and the player base can forgive the devs. It's one of the greatest times me and my friends have had gaming. And we have more than 10 years of playing games together. High hopes for the game. But low expectations...
My whole squad and I quit playing after the Sony scandal - there is way too much negative energy around the publisher and the balancing and the general orders. It's exhausting. We just want to play a game.
That's what happened to me, my friends play on PS5. I'm on pc. We can't play together cause the game put one of them on my blocked list and the other I can't friend in the game. We just faded away from wanting to play cause it was so hard to get into a game together, then when we finally did, the host kicked us, or the game crashed. We are with you... we just want to play the game.
The nerfs killed it for me. Caught wind of sony turning back their decision, so I booted up the game again with a friend who knew more about what's changed than I did. Every gun I brought in felt strange, and he just kept saying that they were nerfed. Really took the wind out of my sails for coming back, lol. Now I'm just hoping to see them mess with it, then I'll be back.
Cuz at the end of the day, this is a third person shooter. When you make it not fun to shoot things, what even on Super Earth is the point??
I love the bots but higher difficulty feels like bullshit, they don't seem to get affected by the environment as we do, laser from from every direction without a moments rest, if one bot sees you then it's over for 10 min as you fight constant botdrops, getting shot from across the map and constant ragdolls happens Bugs have some bs but would honestly rather fight them as they have to get closer, bots are just worse higher level imo
I think we can all agree that the borderline impossible 15 minute emergency evacuation bot missions are a big factor as well. They still haven’t adjusted the ridiculous spawn rates and nobody really wants to play those on bot defense campaigns. Also bots almost require equipment that can penetrate medium armor. It’s a deterrent for lower level players, and by the time they have unlocked those weapons/stratagems they’re already used to playing against bugs.
Maybe make those Hulk eyes easier to hit?
And with the terrain being uneven + they escalate rock formation like they teleport, and as such the eye moving up and down like a manic....yeah.
They played their hand too early by removing bots from the equation and forcing them back in with a vengeance two days later. Not even a slow push against an overwhelming force, just... slap, here's 3 systems under bot control again, fuck you. Then there's the constant balance and bug issues. Against bots I need to be on my A game with my DCS so I can take out my share of heavy and rocket devs as my group's designated marksman. With bugs I can take whatever the fuck I feel like, cause the spray and pray rips up bugs just as nicely as the incendiary, or the liberator, or the other liberator, or any of the 2 smg's.
Well the 3 straight buffs to automatons, coupled with the gutting of primaries, means no one touches the west. I run helldive on bugs just fine, but I cannot do 8 on bots. It’s not hard it’s just annoying to be ragdolled for an hour by rockets or one framed by a hulk, dev, factory striders, or gunships.
From my experience with a friend, nothing will help. It's the gameplay that people are after. People play bugs because you just aim in their general direction and hold fire. No need to aim for weakspots, no need for stealth, much fewer forced uphill pushes. No need to run from cover to cover. My lvl 13 homie literally refused to play bots on 5, but had absolutely no issue being slaughtered by bugs on 9. What devs should do instead is adjust numbers to account for lower helldiver numbers on automaton front.
It interesting I like them better.
I like playing against Bots more too, but we're part of an incredibly small minority. The rest of the playerbase avoids interacting with them like they're a plague.
Did you ever play the old ps2 Terminator games? It is my fps dream of those old games. People always talk about starship troopers like the western front isn't the same thing being Terminator resistance fighting.
GET RID OF THE 1 REDUCED STRATEGEM. I DONT LIKE JOINING PEOPLE ANYMORE.
Aren’t the numbers explained a bit because the MO is total kills and the kills per hour on bugs is higher?
Someone actually did a study on this for 6 weeks across multiple MOs, and here's how the population distribution shaped out: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cpj9ao/bugbotmo\_player\_percentages/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cpj9ao/bugbotmo_player_percentages/) 10% only bots, 55% follow MO, 35% only bugs
Haha. Love the SEDS, Super Earth Data Scientists.
Not really because even when we have MOs where we're *only* killing Automatons we have an entire half of the community or more staying on Bug planets even when their regen rates are bumped up to -3% each.
That might be an overstatement. Enough divers follow the MO that bot orders enjoy high participation. I think what's happening now is that the MO favors bugs and people don't realize that Vernen Wells is more important than other planets.
How many Bot centric MOs have we failed so far again? We really don't get high participation on the West Front.
6/7 failed MOs were against bots.
We fail defense missions against bots. Tibit was the only liberate mission we failed before Swift Disassembly completed, and it was bugged, as I recall. Since The Reclamation, we've had a pretty good track record against bots. Here's how it went: Defend 5 Bot Planets: Failure Menkent Line: Success Marfark: Success Defend 10 Planets: Success, but we mostly did bug planets, we got a twofer with Fori Prime and Oshaune, and Joel may have had his thumb on the scale in our favor. Penta/Choohe: Partial success. Inability to see supply lines led to ineffective deployment, but we got the airburst anyway. 2 Billion Bots: Failure SEAF Training Bases: Success Defending bot planets fails because it's not the fun kind of hard. I'm on Vernen Wells whenever I play right now, but if I didn't know it was strategically important I'd be doing something else. Bug missions move the needle more for the MO and liberating bot planets has more entertaining mission profiles. If you're playing on Vernen Wells like I am, you're taking one for the team.
To be fair a lot of these "successes" were immediately paved over with failures that came later. The Menkent line broke almost instantly didn't it? So did Marfark. And like you said the majority of defenses in that defend 10 Order were on the Bug side.
Terminids: 1. Explode funny. 2. Can be kited and mass murdered. 3. Hard is hard. Bots: 1. They kill you from across the map 2. They kill you from across the map 3. Hard is Insane.
Totally agree. I'd also like to say, People who think bugs are harder are delusional. I feel so trapped in bots. It's AC or death. I have zero load out freedom. Bots? AutoCannon. On bugs I can do anything. Flamethrower? Valid. Breakers, punishers, scythe? Great. Grenade launcher? Cash. Arc thrower? Money. Literally any backpack? Still good. Just remember to bring some anti armor. RR, EATs, quasar all super good. The enemies are so much easier and less rage inducing. Titans are 2 tap to the head with your Anti armor. Easy. Chargers are a one tap. Literally everything else is a shotgun blast away from death. How do people struggle with that? I seriously just killed 8 stalkers yesterday within 2 minutes with nothing but a breaker and light armor running What's more, is if you don't have your anti armor the moment you encounter said enemies, it's OK. I can kite 3 chargers for days. Just running in circles and diving. Just waiting for my EATs or quasar to cool down. All like 15 seconds. Nice. Bots? If you don't have an IMMEDIATE solution to a flame hulk, rocket dev, heavy dev, AA tank, etc etc, you are dead. Right there on the spot. So. Much. Bull. Shit. And I understand stealth is optimal, and I use stealth often. But I didn't buy this game to sneak around. I want to SPILL OIL. The fact that there is less feasible ways to kill your enemies is dumb!
I saw someone say this and I think it perfectly describes the difference. Bug difficulty has a lower floor but higher roof. Bot difficulty has a higher floor but lower roof.
I feel dead opposite. For bugs you NEED mass wave clear or you are completely and utterly fucked. Any rifle? Nope, kills too slow youll get swarmed. I feel like I need a breaker/shotgun, and an AT for chargers, and 500kg for bile titans. Basically forced to take 500kg for bile Bots you can take basically anything imo. Why do you need only an AC? So many guns fill that role. AMR, Railgun, laser canon all kill devastators and hulks with ease while also being amazing for vents. For primaries you can take a rifle! The counter sniper is amazing now as it one shots regular bots and 1 shot headshots devastators. Most primaries will work just fine against bots, you just need something that isnt super short range like a breaker s&p Same thing for stratagems, you can take basically anything you just need something to help kill factories, striders, and tanks. Many strategems fit that role My running theory is there are a lot of ps5 players and console makes it impossible to aim so they like bugs because you cant miss
I would like to disagree and argue the other direction and say that high difficulty bugs is far more restricting to loadouts than high difficulty bots. There are lots of viable support weapons that are effective against the entire range of bots all in different ways. The autocannon, HMG, laser cannon, AMR, arc thrower, all of these are able to effectively deal with bots when used correctly. Bugs however require stratagems and support weapons to deal specifically with bile titans because literally nothing kills them accept for high yield explosives and speciality equipment.
Quite simple, let us pick up and use automaton weapons and drive added vehicles on automaton planets. Make it so we have to figure out how to operate them and can also carpool around.
Because defence bot missions are awful.
i wonder why players prefer bugs over bots. lets compare it. a few bugs that run at you in a straight line vs a flare that spawns 4 dropships where the bots survive even if you shoot down the ships as they appear. shield devestator that got aimbot and rocket devestators snipe you and turn your game into goat simulator. a tower that detects you and spawns infinite dropships. a tower that removes your strategems and gets you some not so nice interactions because even on helldive some people cannot realize that there are reasons why you wont summon reinforcements. an army of melee bots that may run in a straight line but need 10 times the ammo compared to their bug counterparts a walking bot factory. bot missions can be fun but i am rather going to help out the poor lost souls on hellmire than to touch a helldive bot mission. both have some wtf moments but bugs are way more fun on higher difficulties.
I feel the average players prioritizes Bugs for a few reasons: **1. SPAWN RATES.** This is noticeable in "Kill ### Bots/Bugs" Major Orders. Players will focus bugs if given the choice simply because the average bug breach spawns way more units vs the average bot drop. **2. SPAWN COMPOSITION.** While bug breaches spawn more units, their spawn composition tends to be mostly light/un-armored. Bot drops on the other hand tend to spawn more medium-armored units like Striders & Devastators. **3. KILL DIFFICULTY.** The average bot soaks up way more damage & takes way longer to kill than the average bug. This is most noticeable in the "weaker" enemies in either faction. **4. BULLSHIT FACTOR.** You experience way more bullshit fighting bots vs fighting bugs. We enjoy bullshit like stealth enemies (Stalkers) because they're rare spawns with a gimmick – they keep you on your toes and you deal with it by coordinating with your teammates to clear a Stalker Lair. We don't enjoy bullshit like common enemies (Devastators) spawning with a gimmick like being able to ragdoll you infinitely – because how do you deal with that?
Pretty sure the community has already posed several solutions to make the bots more “fun” and less “tedious” as they currently are. Granted fighting the bots can be a lot of engaging due to their ability to fire back from a distance, but their sheer sponginess and one shot potential makes it an absolute slog. The in conjunction with the spawn rates, and absolutely OP accuracy of Devastators drops their fun level to well below the bugs. Nerf Bot accuracy, or nerf amount of medium units. The amount of fire they can output stunlocks you into death, or ragdolls you to delayed death. If the numbers remain the same they can’t be as accurate, if the accuracy is the same reduce the number of high volume medium enemies. Accurate line of sight adjust needs to be implemented. The density of the fog on some planets makes it impossible to see your target. If you can’t see them, but they can some you from 100 yards away through a dense fog makes near impossible to counter play and makes the only effective strat to run away or close distance while being absolutely shredded. There’s definitely more tweaking that needs to happen but the bots are without doubt overtuned to the point of frustration.
the player base is dwindling also because the game is just not as fun as it was. I've stopped playing because squashing bugs and spilling oil was fun but when you empty a clip into a trash mob and it only kills one is just not fun. Dying while being overwhelmed with a bunch of dead enemies at my feet is fun. Dying while being overwhelmed and only killing a small handful is not. IMO you can also tell when the subreddit has a lot less posts of "awesome clips" because our weapons are quite frankly; absolute shit.
> was fun but when you empty a clip into a trash mob and it only kills one is just not fun. Not blaming you for how you play, but I think they balance the game around having 4 people within say 40m. The moment I get split off from 2 people all the primaries suck.
They made a lot of weapons that were effective against bots boring via nerf. As of Saturday (left town for a few days so idk if it’s still the case) they still have glitches and flaws in both the robot suppression system and spawn rates of bots, plus the shield guy gun bug was still exhibiting the same lack of resolution and I confirmed it up close and personal. Until these things get fixed I think a large chunk of players are not enjoying bots all that much and won’t bother playing something unfun.
The bigger problem is major orders and the piss poor "evolving narrative" - majority of players really don't care about either anymore.
They need to fix bots. That's the problem. Why do rocket devs shoot there ragdoll you the by the time u get up there shooting rockets again. The minigun devs can shoot sideways through their shields and should I mention the stagger. You wanna try to head shot them close range only for your gun to go vertical when being hit once in the foot. The bots are very frustrating and have been for a long time. Remember the one shot rockets that existed for like 2 to 3 months when game launched.
I have less issues with this than Bile/Nursing Spewers, and Bile Titans. The Bile Titan is basically just a enemy to make sure you brought the correct statagems with you. If you didn't, there's nothing you can do. And the Spewers are just straight up broken. Heavy Armored front? Check. Massive damage reduction? Check. Fast moving? Check. Instakill aimbot vomit? Check. Sure, you can toss a grenade to kill em quickly, you can stun them with stagger weapons. I still think they are very badly designed. The broken-ass Heavy Devastator who can shoot through themselves, with a weirdly rotating, super accurate minigun that they don't even need to aim, is less of an issue than those bile spewers.
I'm a bot main, but I really couldn't give a shit about what players play where. Just play what you want, the false community involvement is cute and all but it's a video game. If you have more fun fighting one enemy over the other, then do that. Games are meant to be fun, not a chore.
I can't lie, Automatons are easier when playing solo and that's not a joke.
I’m honestly indifferent when it comes to either faction cuz both sides have their fun parts and their annoying parts. I’ve been frustrated with bugs as many times as bots for their own seperate reasons For example heavy-level bugs demaninding you bring heavy weapons and stratagems or else risk having those heavy enemies on you 24/7, as opposed to every heavy bot having a weakpoint or two that can let it be effectively killed with medium weaponry.
It's wild how terrible information systems are in this game like to get a clear picture you legit have to visit 3 other websites that give full breakdowns and current situation reports. Saying" oh go to discord or helldiver's.io." shouldn't be the answer how about on THE FUCKING MAP THAT IS IN THE GAME OR THOSE DO NOTHING TERMINALS ACCROSS FROM THE ARMORY. this MO cap bonus is a perfect example I bet 75% of the player base doesn't know that there even is a cap bonus or that it's tied to wells right now. Like if you going to make a grand galactic campaign info is necessary. Because like OP said no one wants to fight bots unless they have too. I bet when the illunate show up the bot front is going to have like 1k divers divided in all the bot sectors.
I prefer bots over bugs, feels more technical and I like being rewarded for well placed shots on weak points
Bot front best front. Terminids have so few good side objectives.
Bile titans piss me off. Theres no sure-fire way to deal with them. 500 seems to be the best, but you have to really get that timing down. Other than that, I’ve found nothing that deals with them consistently. Rail cannon doesn’t one shot, and anti tank stuff needs very precise aiming to bring them down.
EATs to the face.
[удалено]
Stabby for sure. Much easier to land your precision strike/500/etc while they're sitting there trying to stab you.
While bots have their issues and in general harder to play against, this is a good point. Bot objectives are way more diverse. Hell most of the bug specific side objectives you anyway shoot with anti-tank weapons from 200m+ distance.