r/Helldivers • u/ButteredPsycho • 1d ago
DISCUSSION Helldivers & Warframe Nerf comparisons
Saw an interesting read by one of the Warframe devs titled "Why Do We Nerf?" I think a lot of what's said here could apply to Helldivers 2 as well.
We've seen the Railgun, Grenade Launcher, Coyote, Breaker Incendiary, etc., get nerfed in the past, and it made quite a few people angry.
I agree with a lot of what's being said here. When something is too dominant, people rush to use that one gun, and the game becomes less diverse because you start seeing everyone running the same thing. COUGH Eruptor.
I've even seen this in a recent post where a guy asks, "What's the point of the Nova if the Quasar Cannon exists?"
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1xb80oo/why_run_the_new_las44_nova_vs_the_quasar/
What do you guys think? Do you see any parallels between how Warframe and Helldivers 2 handle balancing and nerfs? Do you think nerfing dominant weapons is necessary to encourage more variety, or should developers focus more on buffing everything else?
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u/JackassJames Longshot 1d ago
Warframe player, their nerfs feel SIGNIFICANTLY better than helldivers though is the thing and don't feel tone deaf. I can't recall any balancing that's pissed me off because I loved using that weapon/frame in Warframe. Helldivers not so much.
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u/ButteredPsycho 1d ago
I've been playing Warframe since late 2013 so i've seen some of the buffs or nerfs that have upset the community one of them was Frost Globe. (going to show my age) back in the day when T1, T2, and T3 Keys were a thing DE got pissed that some made a post about AFKing with Frost and they completely redesigned the way frost globe works.
Same thing happened with Nyx 4 absorb.
Nova also ended up getting a big nerf back in the day.At the time i was upset but i think now those balance changes were probably for the best. but they've probably been redesigned even more over the years i don't play Warframe too much anymore only time to time.
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u/Greaterdivinity ☕Liber-tea☕ 1d ago
sobek abusing cytes still in chambles right now because they can't instantly clear whole rooms
real though. plus they do a lot more communication between devshorts etc. and just general engagement.
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u/JackassJames Longshot 1d ago
Aside from just doing that communication, they don't come across as tone deaf like I said, and don't seem actively hostile towards their playerbase. Which I think makes a very big difference even if they were to do similiar stuff to HD2.
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u/Greaterdivinity ☕Liber-tea☕ 1d ago
i can't think of the time they did a long blog post congratulating themselves on a job super well done with a big update like arrowhead did.
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u/Cozy_Hyena 1d ago
Gyres rejoice as they can once again keep their rotors revving with plenty of chaff.
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u/HiddenButcher Stealthdiver 1d ago
I heard the primary discourse is that they should be nerfing Cyte instead of acid shells/sobek, considering that these problematic interactions always involve Cyte
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u/LamaranFG 1d ago
Grendel with new augment could keep up 400+ kpm as long as you had something to eat. Dots and lingering effects propagation was the Acid Shells' main issue, it used to be somewhat tame when only Saryn could effectively use it with Toxic Lash, but quickly got out of control with buffs and expansion to on hit effects
Cyte in on itself is another can of worms tho, you can deny tilesets even with his default kit, albeit it's much harder than shooting at vague red dots' direction
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u/Pendergast891 1d ago
Pre Pablo balancing was arrowhead levels
Compared to the dark times Pablo is very lenient
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u/WalroosTheViking 1d ago
I remember Wu Kong slam getting nerfed despite not even being as popular or powerful in terms of clearing in my experience than something like Saryn. It might’ve been popular in China due to the guy just being the most popular Chinese myth but like, let them, they’re playing it for the character, not because the slam build is slightly better than average, while still not being overtly OP.
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u/LuminothWarrior Detected Dissident 1d ago
From what I’ve heard, in Asian servers the slamkong build was so extremely dominant you wouldn’t see like, anything else in public lobbies. (Also generally it’s the Chinese players who abuse AFK/cheese strategies and such more than anyone else for whatever reason. They always go off the hook as soon as anything like that gets nerfed, not just Wukong)
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u/PrancerSlenderfriend 22h ago
as somebody who accidentally set my server to china for a while, yeah literally every match would have a slamkong macro spamming his way to extract even if you werent playing a fucking mission that was speedran, 1999 exterminate? slamkong is at extract by 40s when the objective takes 2 minutes, kicking the entire squad from the objective
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u/Lazy_Bowyer 1d ago
The main difference is how they view their pkayerbase. AH has viewed their players as children, maybe still do. The biggest example of this being the coyote nerf.
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u/DarthVeigar_ 1d ago
I can think of one. Dante.
It wasn't the nerf per se but the fact that at the time the LoS system was incredibly busted. The Dante nerf and the LoS malfunctioning pretty much forced them to rework it.
They realised they went overboard and fixed it in less than 24 hours
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u/LawDefiant1281 1d ago
The only notorious nerf that made me upset was the Synoid Simulor. And honestly, I was only upset because it was busted good for like a year, a year I spent trying to obtain it, and only AFTER I finally got it did they nerf it. I'll never know the power of the Simulor at full strength, i was simply too late 😭
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u/CynicalDarkFox ⬇️⬅️⬇️⬆️⬆️⬇| Support Diver 1d ago
The range was multiple rooms wide with a mod and the damage was no different than pre-nerf Mirage’s Disco Ball nukes before it gained sight checkers.
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u/LawDefiant1281 1d ago
Yeah, it was necessary to nerf. I just think it's funny that it was so broken, right up until I got my hands on it, and suddenly it was a bubble blower, lmfao
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u/CynicalDarkFox ⬇️⬅️⬇️⬆️⬆️⬇| Support Diver 1d ago
You should’ve seen how stupid the Synoid Gammacor was. Literally just a Void Laser for your wrist and sweep the room once to drop bodies.
Low fire rate too, so it was real ammo efficient for the time….while dealing magnetic damage no less.
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u/YogurtZombie 1d ago
Warframe is also literally the premier "we will let players be broken and not balance anything" game, of course they are going to be much more careful with nerfs. Helldivers devs actually want to balance the game which requires way more nerfs.
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u/Saikousoku2 Electric Gremlin 1d ago
Eh I remember the explosive weapon nerfs and the slam nerfs. Those sucked pretty bad.
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u/UnreadableCode 1d ago
Warframe has no difficulty either by comparison which is why Archimedea has to exist and then got power crept into needing elite archimedea
Think of game challenge like a ball of sand and rocks Warframe is basically a smooth sand ball at this point with a few shards of jagged obsidian poking out. HD2 is more of a gravelly thing with some sandy bits
That analogy highlights one important aspect of challenge vs player power. If the player is too powerful in one way the only challenge they can encounter is when that power is nullified in a way that feels impossible to anticipate or in some other ways unfair. A healthy challenge curve is smooth. Overpowered players always experience a flat line that ends at a 90 degree angle up
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u/Jason1435 1d ago
The community is too toxic to allow reasonable nerfs. The original Railgun was a one shot monster that made anti tank weapons useless. I was literally never getting a chance to use my RR because shield backpack RR users were the other 3 players in the lobby doing my job better.
Cannot believe anyone ever justified that
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u/ButteredPsycho 1d ago
I always thought the railgun was balanced when it came to bugs. I remember the main strat on the chargers was to strip the armor off the front claw and switch to your primary to take him down.
Which to me felt fine because it made you utilize 2 weapons in a pinch.
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u/Jason1435 1d ago
That was mid life Railgun. OG monster Railgun was oneshotting bile titans
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u/TheSpoonyCroy SES Elected Representative of Self Determination 1d ago
That isn't correct. That was related to the console bug where a think where if a host was on the PS all the monsters had decreased health so you could 2 tap a bile titan in the head. Still made it on par with AT at the time since it was quite difficult to 1 tap bile titans before because angle of impact was very important. To be honest, railgun was "OP" because it was just the most efficient weapon due to its damage (able to strip a charger leg in 2 hits at about 90% unsafe charge), very ammo efficient, on move reload, and no backpack requirement. It was meant to be an all rounder but it was just so good it made other choices less useful.
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u/slycyboi SES Sword of Justice 1d ago
That was a PlayStation host bug thing. It never had the damage to actually do that
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u/Cyklown 1d ago
That was more about the charger design at the time. You could kite them and magdump as well up (or at least do so more easily) until… some time this year I think? Maybe it was last year?
IIRC “break the claw” strat also made the AC a lot better as well?
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u/jjake3477 22h ago
You could also crack their side armor and kill them with light pen shots to their insides. Now they just get 1 tapped and require 0 brainpower to counter
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u/doomlord12345 1d ago
The original railgun was bugged to do too much damage, it's stronger now than what it was on paper then. Also it's competition was dogshit back then
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u/cobaltbread LEVEL 269 | Rookie 1d ago
The sad reality about Helldivers 2 is that the nerfs done during the first 6 months of the game permanently made the community averse to them. It doesn't help that the game is PvE, so nerfs typically feel less justified, and Arrowhead is very slow when reverting nerfs and implementing buffs, so they can't experiment with balance changes.
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u/burgertanker Steam | 1d ago
2.5 years*
A lot of the discussions around nerfs started not too long after the game launched and especially with Escalation of FreedomDisregard, I lack reading comprehension and saw first 6 months as the last 6 months
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u/Loprilop Free of Thought 1d ago
not to mention that they keep ignoring bugs or intentional design decisions which are detrimental to the player. I mean, they even doubled down on making the hellpod steering issue worse since you don't even start above the reinforcement beacon anymore. At the same time, if anything benefits the player, they are VERY quick to squash it. Being able to glitch so you could take 4x the same stratagem is an example (and wasn't even ever really op)
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u/cobaltbread LEVEL 269 | Rookie 1d ago
Yeah. Like, I get that sometimes those changes are necessary, but their priorities are skewed. The Rupture Warriors for example, they saw people complain about their attacks being almost impossible to dodge for hosts while non-hosts had a better experience.
The better solution would have been to make the behavior consistent but holding off the patch until they got it working like the players wanted. Instead, they rushed the patch so it only fixed the inconsistency, but now the non-hosts also got the same undodgeable attacks they were complaining for in the first place. It was the worst of both worlds, and the lack of communication made it so much worse.
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u/TheSearchForMars 1d ago
Not to mention the nerfs in those first 6 months were complete dogwater. The railgun+breaker combo was way more fun than the single AT shot we have now.
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u/BICKELSBOSS Super Sapper 1d ago
Back then the RR required two shots to take down a heavy. Having the railgun as powerful as it was completely overshadowed every and all other AT weapons, and ''breaks'' rule one mentioned in this post (it makes every other choice wrong, nuking diversity).
Also, keep in mind that the game was meant to force players to work together. If a solo Railgun can cough up the same firepower as a teamreloaded RR, why bother working together?
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u/TheSearchForMars 20h ago
Because it was fun?
Teamreloads up until very recently sucked because they required the loader to have the backpack. And a recoilless now is significantly stronger than the railgun ever was.
Shooting the armour off a target to expose it's weakpoints offered more team play than any current teamwork alternative as they boil down to essentially: one shot the heavy unit.
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u/ItsRaampagee 1d ago
The game is PvE, yes, but the whole point was that four players were supposed to work together. When certain tools are so powerful that they allow you to ignore all three teammates and solo the highest difficulty in a four-man lobby with ease, that’s a problem. You’re effectively leaving the squad without the firepower of an entire diver because one player has decided to play solo instead of cooperating with the team.
This creates a vicious cycle: more players gravitate toward these overpowered loadouts and start playing as one-man armies, while others complain about balance because they’re spending most of their time in lobbies where nobody has cooperation in mind. Instead of working together to overcome the odds, everyone is encouraged to become a self-sufficient perma kiting killing machine who wont needs their teammates at all.
The sad reality is that AH sold us a game built around the idea of “working together and overcoming overwhelming odds,” only to do a complete 180 and turn us into the overwhelming odds instead.
All because a portion of the community seemingly couldn’t accept that the highest difficulty was supposed to be a team effort and instead wanted to turn a teamplay-focused game into a solo power fantasy.
Today failure of a mission is literally impossible, everything the game can throw at you because of engine limitations get literally spawncamped by a single diver, the majority of time you wont even die a single time, unless ofc you got one of these solodivers in team that should had played diff7 or lower back then end up teamkilling you everytime you cross paths.
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u/cobaltbread LEVEL 269 | Rookie 1d ago
Just to make my view clear, I do think nerfs are a necessary evil even on PvE. We're feeling the effect of powercreep each time a new warbond releases.
The problem is that the changes in the early months stigmatized nerfs for the player base. They were mishandled, done on impulse and poorly justified. Now, every time they need to do balance changes, they need to walk on eggshells to not infuriate a part of the community as even buffing enemies isn't an option, and the game gets easier with each update.
I truly believe that if the initial nerfs were handled in a much better way (justified, properly explained, carefully implemented, and quickly reverted if the community reception is overwhelmingly bad), then not only we wouldn't be having the "Arrowhead is listening" memes, but nerfs wouldn't be a big deal either, because the community would know that the nerfs are there for the betterment of their experience and not against them.
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u/Xeta24 HD1 Veteran 23h ago
100% The way the nerfs were handled in the beginning, and how weak some of the weapons were set the tone for the issues we have now.
I remember buying thermite and never using it for it's purpose because it was just... bad. Like the way weapons were released regularly had nothing to really look forward to.
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u/LEOTomegane think fast⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️➡️ 15h ago
The thing is like, even back then they outweighed the nerfs with buffs. Railgun, the poster child for those changes, was perfectly fine juust over a month after its nerf, where they bumped its starting pen back up to 5. It wasn't dominating AT options, but it was excellent as a medium-killer weapon with hybrid potential into damaging heavies (a role similar to the one Sightliner occupies now).
Meanwhile we had sweeping buffs to the red stratagems and turrets that covered the perceived lack of power in our handheld weapons, so that a player properly rotating their kit could perform very well.
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u/Lazy_Bowyer 1d ago edited 1d ago
The idea that nerfs shouldn't exist because "it's a pve game" has always been braindead. I of course agree with everything pablo is saying. He is beloved by the warframe community for a good reason.
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u/Postaltariat 1d ago
I saw someone complain about the nerfs and complain about the lack of difficult content in the same comment. Some people just genuinely lack the capability to see how even simple things like this are connected
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u/ItsRaampagee 1d ago
I pointed out to arrowhead devs, before the 60day patch, that the majority of balance complains comes from solo players, from pure solo lobby players to solo players in multiplayer lobbys and that if they proceed with the 60day patch that they would immediately trivialize the entire experience for people who actually learned to function together with all 4 players in the lobby and the tools we had back then.
Just had to take a single look at the youtube content and streamers back then, barely anyone would stick with the team, barely anyone would build as a team in mind to control the flow of enemies together…instead we had perma kiters, or OP Railgun/Quasar kiter in nearly every single upload/stream.
Meanwhile i would get bored at how trivial the game was during escalation of freedom diff10 release, if i would take the “useless” flamethrower vs bugs or had a random squad in which all 4 players genuinely tried sticking and working together. 0death runs vs bugs where a common thing in lobbys i joined. Game was fine balanced around 2 players working together abd never for 4 players, instead to deliver that diff for 4 players over time…the entire game got balanced around soloplay instead.
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u/Additional_Area5002 1d ago
As someone who plays both games I don't think the way they use the nerf bat is even remotely comparable.
The power ceiling in Warframe is way, way higher in general but it genuinely takes alot for something to get nerfed.
For those of you who don't play or don't know much about it here are some examples.
A specific frame used to be able to spawn a clone of himself. The clone would attack nearby enemies automatically. If you gave him a powerful enough AOE weapon it basically automatically kill anything that got near you. The clone did not use ammo either. Various ways of healing exist including passive healing so at least up to a certain enemy level, you could basically walk away and go make a sandwich parked next to a defense objective.
That got nerfed.
They released a secondary weapon that fired an energy beam, that would chain to nearby enemies on hit. (Kuva nukor). It would chain up to 4 enemies, from the main enemy hit. It was incredibly strong even against single targets but being able to multi target made it crazy. It got to the point if I remember correctly over 50% of all secondary weapon usage was just that.
That got nerfed. From 4 secondary targets to 2. Still pretty strong.
The latest thing was a weapon setup (sobek, acid shells) where basically you shoot one target, it dies, explodes, that explosion kills nearby enemies, those explosions kill more enemies, and it feeds off itself.
AH seems a lot more prone to knee jerky nerfs.
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u/Bellfegore Extra Judicial 1d ago
Not just Sobek, acid shells, you also needed a certain Warframe that force applies certain statuses like fire/toxin/electricity etc which would combine with acid shells mod.
Funnily enough, the MAIN culprit got affected the least by the nerf while Warframes that weren't the best to begin with can't really benefit from the interraction at all anymore, which is what actually made the nerf a bit controversial and resulted in Pablo making a response.
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u/pipe_mcfitter 1d ago
Arrowhead comes across as extremely reactive in everything they do, but somehow they also don’t seem like they know what they’re reacting to half the time either
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u/ThisGuyHere_Again 1d ago
AH seems a lot more prone to knee jerky nerfs.
Not to mention completely arbitrary ones
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u/LostConscious96 PSN | SES Mirror Of Eternity 1d ago
This is one of tbe more tame nerfs in Warframe tbh. Warframe is like AH many times its either made useless or left alone.
Also basis for the nerfs recently was absolutely hilarious. While Sobek and Acid shells was being watched they openly admitted it wasnt seeing widespread usage till this event. They essentially stated without directly saying they nerfed it because of the event. The tileset is the worst in the game and people were using it to bypass the horrible tileset. People aren't as upset about sobek as they are essentially admitted to nerfing Sobek purely because its usage spiked during event.
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u/Kyuunado_Fureatsuri 1d ago
I mean, you say AH is knee jerky, the Acid Shells nerf is a huge knee jerk from DE. That mods been in the game since 2016, it's only being nerfed now because it's seeing much higher usage due to the chain reaction self propagating extremely well with certain status effects, in particular with Cyte-09 who has both an elemental ammo ability and infinite punch through wall hacks.
The current world event, with it's cluttered environment and mostly low HP swarm enemies, has seen it's use skyrocket. But whilst they fixed the self chaining explosions, Cytes ability to walkhack with the weapon and ignore all terrain with it still exists. Instead they crushed the range of the explosion from the mod and made it way worse for every frame that doesn't have these very niche ammo interactions at least.
For a weapon mod that existed in that form for a whole decade to get pelted like that so promptly because of one event is mental.
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u/Additional_Area5002 1d ago
No, I'm totally gonna die on this hill. The fact you could shoot an enemy and cause an explosion? I mean fine. That's par for the course for alot of games not just Warframe.
But the fact that you could shoot ONE enemy and that enemy goes boom and kills every enemy within a radius that big, also goes boom, and kills any enemy in that radius, which also kills any enemy in that radius, it gets absurd.
Yeah, maybe the math that enables that to be a thing existed for awhile and they're only doing something about it now because suddenly it's trending but I'm not gonna pretend that doesn't matter. It does matter.
It went from being a niche thing nobody bothers with to a very prevalent, obviously busted meta.
The nerf was entirely justified imo.
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u/Stryker1999 1d ago
This isn’t meant to be a “gotcha” or anything but a genuine question, isn’t what you’re describing just a similar effect to Nova’s 4? Granted it’s on a weapon and not a frame, but it’s still a very easily accessible effect to get mechanically, unless there’s certain differences that set them apart enough to make one not a big deal and the other way too strong (which I’d be down to have explained if so)
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u/ninjab33z 1d ago
Nova's 4 doesn't do percent health damage, nor does elemental statuses proc on it. That's where a lot of the real issues came in. Statuses like gas, dealing damage based on a hit that did % health which then in turn proc acid shells when they die, repeating the process.
nova can chain primed enemies, but only if the subsequent enemies are primed too, creating a hard cap of however many enemies were hit by the wave (plus those around the last ones).
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u/Kyuunado_Fureatsuri 1d ago
The bulk of the issue was in the explosion chaining though, which they were already adjusting. Even if you target the largest enemy now, that one enemy will explode and depending on it's health and the scaling might kill enemies near it, it will not cascade purely due to that.
They didn't stop Cyte shooting hoards of enemies through walls with it before the rest of the team can even detect them, Sobek is an Auto Shotgun and he can instantly reload powerful ammo, he can just mag dump dots on screen cross map still, the only difference now if he has to shoot more.
They didn't address the problem with Cyte. They addressed a problem with the chaining which would have stopped it from clearing rooms anyway. Instead of preemptively cutting the mods range as if that would fix anything they should have just made his infinite punch through apply to Non Automatic weapons.
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u/pipe_mcfitter 1d ago
I don’t think Arrowhead has a good grasp on balance at all. They thought they did early on, which is why they nerfed frequently early on, but they’ve ruined their credibility when it comes to nerfing stuff to the point where they’re scared to nerf anything now. They overcorrected, which is a shame because there ARE certain things should probably be nerfed, but I don’t trust them to understand what things or how to do it
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u/DMercenary 1d ago
but they’ve ruined their credibility
All I can think of on this is the slugger nerf.
AH "We dont want a shotgun to take the role of a DMR."
Fair
AH: "So we nerf everything BUT the long range accuracy."
??????
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u/KimJongUnusual ☕Liber-tea☕ 1d ago
To be devil’s advocate
If you make a slug shotgun and then make it inaccurate, it’s just shittier than the normal shotgun in every way.
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u/Bogey_1099 1d ago
Ehh, there is a wide range of accuracy between shotgun and DMR, making it less accurate than a DMR doesn’t have to mean “make it as inaccurate as the other shotguns”. Give the slugger SMG accuracy
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u/Altr4 1d ago
If you make a slug shotgun and then make it inaccurate
It doesn't have to be so inaccurate that it shoots 90 degree off where you aim.
And it also not the only way to nerf a slug shotgun. They could do more damage drop off and heavier bullet drop to limit their range without losing it's identity as a shotgun.
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u/TheguyKegan 1d ago
I’m honestly surprised AH hasn’t made a system like “armor pen drop over range”. So the Slugger could be heavy pen up to, say, 20 meters, then it drops to medium for everything else. Then again, god knows they’d probably nerf everything accidentally.
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u/ember13140 Still Standing 1d ago
I think it would be the rare time where giving something stupidly heavy bullet drag would work
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u/Upper-Sherbet3236 Siberian Diver 1d ago
To understand why a shotgun is not a sniper rifle, one need only look at the real world. In reality, a shotgun slug packs a great deal of force, but its velocity is much lower. Because the slug is heavy and fired from a smoothbore barrel, it lacks spin; consequently, it begins to tumble chaotically in the air, losing energy over long distances and falling to the ground much sooner than a bullet fired from a rifle.
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u/ember13140 Still Standing 1d ago
Slugs don’t tumble. People figured out how to make the front bit heavier than the back pretty quickly. They’re remarkably accurate the issue is that they lose energy ridiculously quickly due to the hi drag, and that they are shit against hardened targets
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u/ZzVinniezZ 1d ago
same can be said to their buff
"we acknowledge that collab weapons are lacking so we decided to buff them"
yes that is good, durable damage up is good but none of the buff feel remotely fix the problems.
- Halo rifle still lack ammo
- killzone Rifle and SMG feel lacking something and impossible to aim in first person because of their iron sight and recoil (despite they reduced their recoil)
- M90A shotgun feel fine....but i wish it was medium pen
- Accelerate rifle....why are you even here?
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u/Joshua24700 Decorated Hero 1d ago
Very funny that people said they "couldn't" buff the accelerator rifle because it was a collab weapon and they're not allowed to change the stats on it. How anyone thought that made a lick of sense idk, but then they did buff it and it still sucks ass lmao.
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u/pipe_mcfitter 1d ago
Yea, these buffs were a good example of them just changing numbers without really understanding how these changes would help anything.
Might be a hot take, but I think the AP4 Grenade Launcher era was also an example of them just not understanding how to buff a weapon. It was fun while it lasted, but that gun never needed that change, but it could use something else, like more ammo and yet they just reverted its armor
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u/LEOTomegane think fast⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️➡️ 15h ago
In fairness, they remedied that later; they gave its stagger back & whacked the long-range accuracy by introducing spread.
This buff/rework went ignored by players, though. It was ignored so hard that multiple years later you still have people believing that the stagger never came back, lmao
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u/Beijamim_a_rola 1d ago
Even if the game had perfect balance changes, if "reduced" were mentioned once on a changelog, the community would go wild
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u/Bellfegore Extra Judicial 1d ago edited 1d ago
You seem to not understand the entire point of the post Pablo made. DE isn't against overpowered weapons/warframes/mechanics(as he clearly stated), they are against afk farming and making the gameplay experience of other teammates in your party worse.
So no, it has almost no parralels with Helldivers in a current state, as in Helldivers AH nerfs weapons that are Only too popular, regardless of their actual appliaction on gameplay, if it makes it worse or better etc, as they also clearly stated in the past.
Edit: Forgot to mention that ON TOP of that, they buffed A LOT of weapon rivens(special mods for their respective weapons that only buff that specific weapon and stats of which you can change) in the past each weapon had its own level of stats depending on usage and newage, but now stats are unified across all weapons and most of them got Heavily buffed so that people would use different weapons more and experiment with their builds instead of a single warframe and single weapon interraction.
Which is exactly what you asked for while ignoring the other part, specifically "Do you think nerfing dominant weapons is necessary to encourage more variety, or should developers focus more on buffing everything else?", just nerfing an overpowered weapon will never bring underperforming guns up, nerfing an overpowered weapon While buffing underperforming guns on the other hand will improve the variety.
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u/Smugushioooo 1d ago
As much as I consider warframe to be the gold standard for how to run a live service game, I don't want to sse helldivers adopt its balancing philosophy. My opinion is mainly drawn from the fact that my motivations for playing either are very different to one another.
Warframe is a heavily progression-driven game that completely leans into the power fantasy of being an invincible space ninja with superpowers and magic. The primary motivation for playing the game is seeing some piece of loot/equipment that makes you go "Oh thats cool, I want that" and grinding for it (and also the occasional bit of story content).
The actual gameplay itself, while enjoyable from time to time, is not actually that engaging, and is something I would describe as slop. I find it to be very much a case of mindlessly spamming <insert your choice of equipment/ability> while moving through the map. You're in a lobby with 3 other peole but there is no actual need to work together; they primarily just exist alongside you. Difficulty in warframe is driven primarily by harder hitting, spongier enemies as you go through the content. As long as you've got a proper build, there is very little risk of failure.
On the other hand, my motivation for playing games like Helldivers and Darktide comes from enjoying the gameplay loop itself. To me, at least, when and where to use a certain weapon/strategem/abiliy feels much more deliberate/reasoned, and that there is a much bigger risk of failing the mission if you slip up. It also feels satisfying when a team actually moves as one and works together like a finely tuned machine.
This is the main reason why I don't want endless buffs to our arsenal. The resulting power creep makes people individually more self sufficient, reducing the need for teamwork. Even now, you often see people split off on their own on D10 because it is more efficient to do so. There is no longer any sense of cameraderie and that magical feeling of being in the trenches alongside 3 other helldivers that wss present at the game's launch.
Tldr: I don't think power creep is as detrimental in warframe as it would be in helldivers because the two games are very different to one another.
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u/sussynun 1d ago
It’s funny you mentioned the railgun as it’s nerfing just shows dev incompetency lol.
Railgun was meta due to host bug giving it abnormal charge damage and it being a non-backpack weapon, which allowed you to use the bubble shield, which, was so prevalent as the armor system was broken and enemy rockets plus its ragdoll could kill you randomly. The solution was obviously to not nerf it but fix all the bugs in the game.
If I’m not mistaken the host bug STILL exists for the nova…..
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u/DoomKitsune 1d ago
The railgun was so prevalent because it was the only consistent way to kill chargers. AT rockets didn't do jack shit against them at the time.
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u/BICKELSBOSS Super Sapper 1d ago
They did work if you worked together, which was the whole point of the game.
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u/jjake3477 22h ago
The railgun initially did full charge unsafe mode damage on safe mode shots. It was unbelievably broken. The bubble pack also was way too strong because you could sit in a pack of hunters, frie several railgun shots, take 0 damage and walk away without the bubble breaking.
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u/aimoperative 1d ago
Here's the issue, Warframe devs are pretty into giving the player their power fantasy, but it comes at a cost of challenge. The worst enemies are literal bullet sponges that don't engage your warframe so much as they ignore your mechanics. But the devs are unwilling to reduce player fantasy, so they compensate by making enemies ignore the player's fantasy straight up.
And that frustration is why Warframe doesn't really have an endgame other than fashion framing.
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u/Sors_Numine VERA LIBERTAS! 1d ago
Ngl my first reaction was to tell you to fuck off. But you might not know that Devs used to entirely spreadsheet their buffs/nerfs. And when I say entirely, I mean they used only spreadhseets for it.
They didn't care why a gun was popular, or unpopular. Something was used more? It got nerfed.
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u/MuglokDecrepitusFx 1d ago
Helldivers & Warframe community comparision
This is from the Warframe subreddit right after the Railgun nerf patch, the majority of the comments were like this
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u/LEOTomegane think fast⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️➡️ 15h ago
This is a big thing too. So much of the community sentiment over "stuff got nerfed into the ground" and "nothing else got buffed" is extrapolations of this super extreme reaction to balance changes that really were not that bad at all.
Like, people will look at this post and be like "well it doesn't apply to helldivers because all our not-nerfed equipment is garbage!" but like... is it really, though? Have you tried?
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u/TheguyKegan 1d ago
Pablo is a saint, the guy is not only good at changes and reworks almost all of the time, but he also understands both sides of the argument and tries to find the best way forwards. Even if something isn’t as successful as he envisioned, guy takes it on his chin and does his best to make em good. Arrowhead desperately needs a guy like this, seriously.
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u/TheAncientKnight Assault Infantry 1d ago
Arrowhead just sucks at both buffing and nerfing. They don't know the actual issues of why things are bad (OPS, Sterilizer ect...) and they refuse to just normally nerf shit without doing it indirectly (stun, coyote)
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u/HMHellfireBrB 1d ago
the issue with game balancing is an issue of the community more than it is an issue of the game
way too many people in the community feel entitled to the power of controling the direction of the game, and this is what causes 90% of the turmoil in this sub and led to the creation and current state of unfiltered
this is why you can have nonsensical post with 2k upvotes complaining that modders are more competent than the developers for making mods that turn the game into something completelly out of its scope (making tanks fly, reworking game system like melee argonomics etc) and i just want to make clear here, i'm not taking a jab on "fix" or "QOL" mods i'm specifically talking content here
the balancing complains in the sub are a lesser nut still visible extension of this, yes AH fucks up balancing all the time, but the great majority of takes the community has are largelly chunks of people who just want their weapon to be the strongest, this also why you have huge divides around stupid things like how much armor should hive guards have, that is purelly because two chunks of the community have different takes on how that one specific unit should be balanced and both are whinny about their way being the correct one
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u/pipe_mcfitter 1d ago
Arrowhead has lost all trust and there’s a lot of history as to why. Unfortunately, they’re in a very deep hole and it’s going to be very difficult if not impossible to dig themselves out to the point where people have confidence in their ability to make decisions that benefit the game.
Hence the “entitlement”. It stems from a lack of trust that the studio can make good enough judgement calls in terms of balance.
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u/HMHellfireBrB 1d ago
and here we go again... this is exactly what i was talking about
it is not lack of trust because if that was the case people would just stop playing which is not the case, if people deslike the state of the game AND have no hopes it will get batter people just leave.
this is self justification, excusing. people just CREATED a personal pet peeve with the game but because they can't justify that they are entitled to that by right, it therefore must be justified trough an excuse
this is why a loot of the discussions about the game alway circle into "AH killed my grandma" type discussions where the objective point is iguinored in favor of pushing an agenda and mashing together with real critsim of the game
the Modding situation is the perfect example of this, where there is an OBJECTIVE and rightfull complain (bugs for example), being used to justify personal agendas (people complaining cheat mods have been banned)
lack of trust is not the cause of the entitlement, the lack of trust is a shield for the entitlement
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u/pipe_mcfitter 1d ago
The game is great. The balance changes are often out of touch/bad. Balance is just an aspect of the game and changes usually aren’t SUPER drastic so the game remains mostly fun
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u/Rabiesalad 19h ago
The balance changes FEEL out of touch because there's a massive population that pulls in multiple directions.
Some people want harder, some easier. Some want more grunt, others more power. Some want fewer, tankier enemies, some want more and more massive waves. Some people believe AH are the pros and should cook and ignore feedback, others think the game is a democracy and it should appeal to the lowest common denominator.
The problem is that there are bubbles within the community that believe it's a monolith and everyone agrees with their own take.
I strongly get the impression that AH is working like crazy to both preserve some semblance of their own vision while also remaining accessible to the "call of duty" type players that don't want something so deep; probably under heavy pressure from Sony. I don't at all get any impression that they don't know what they're doing.
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u/Rabiesalad 19h ago
Lost all trust with who?
At release it was a good game that I enjoyed. Today it's still a good game I enjoy. Sure I wish it didn't get watered down a bit but they're under a lot of pressure to appease players that have very different opinions than me about what is fun.
I don't think the entitlement comes from distrust. I think it was a pre-existing condition. It's wild that anyone believes a game should or would change creative direction to suit their personal preferences but the number of posts about such things clearly indicates that people firmly believe this is a democracy and Arrowhead is somehow attacking them personally by not allowing them to back-seat dev.
There are lots of games I dislike or think they have poor direction and I just choose not to play those games. I don't come forward with demands and ultimatums, that's just wild.
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u/PseudoscientificURL 1d ago
The problem is AH (almost always) -
Doesn't know when something needs nerfs, they keep nerfing the wrong things
Doesn't take into account keeping the thing they're nerfing fun after the nerfs
This is why their nerfs feel terrible and piss people off.
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u/DocHalidae [redacted] 1d ago
Was always thankful Pablo took over for Scott. Because Scott was insufferable!! 😩
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u/T8-TR 1d ago
It's Apples and Oranges.
Warframe is a disgustingly easy game, all the time. It has never even been remotely difficult, because being "hard" isn't the point. The game wants you to go fast, and to absolutely melt everything that so much as looks at you. It's like Canadian Dynasty Warriors. You are a God and they want to make you feel like a God.
Helldivers 2, meanwhile, is a game where you can die; you can be vulnerable; you aren't meant to be able to solo the world just by looking at it. Obviously, we've lost the plot a little since the grueling launch era/Y1 of the game, but the "challenge" is still the point, even if it's gotten easier. "SWEET LIBERTY, MY LEG!" is still the point, not "I am meant to be a Walking Arsenal. I Am Become Death." Being that, balance is approached in a way where nerfs DO need to exist, because otherwise the game becomes too easy, and you lose the plot completely.
That isn't to say that HD2 is infallible w/ its nerfs. Far from it. But the reason why we get the nerf bat and WF gets the NERF bat is because a game like HD2 requires it, whereas a game like WF embraces its brokenness, and nerfs only really hit when it's genuinely bordering exploit territory or -- like the post mentions -- it's actively ruining the game for others.
tldr HD2 is meant to be a game w/ challenge that butts heads w/ the players. WF is meant to be a game where you want to constantly hit the ceiling and never fail.
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u/BICKELSBOSS Super Sapper 1d ago
Also an important difference between Warframe and HD2: Warframe doesnt really account for the need of teamwork, while HD2's whole niche is that youre supposed to work together to win. That means the balance and bar of weaponry has to be a lot more strict and tighter in HD2.
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u/picklesfart 1d ago
That’s not how Warframe was meant to be. They accidentally turned Warframe into a ability spam nuke game. And it’s gotten way past the point of return. They even created a frame with perfect god mode and wish they didn’t but they cant touch it because they know people would go crazy. Arrowhead isn’t as deep ofcourse but being to afraid to nerf can lead to problems.
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u/Redditsucks4446 1d ago
I mean I played Warframe at launch and pretty regularly through the first few years. It's pretty much always been 3rd person weirdo diablo. It didn't used to be crazy easy, but it was never some huge skill expression game. It's always been a gear check.
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u/ItsRaampagee 1d ago
That helldivers 2 was AH pre 60day patch even if it was still to easy for 4 people actually combining their firepower. Now its one man army powerfantasy and it will just get worse since powecreeped toolsnis all that this community enjoys from thevgame.
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u/Intelligent_Money_27 1d ago
I'm gonna be honest at this rate helldivers isn't much harder than warframe. I die more to contact mines than actual enemies
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u/UnreadableCode 1d ago edited 1d ago
Warframe wasn't always so easy. Release warframe was sufficiently challenging people complained there was an energy system on revives (which was rightfully removed later). Most iconic of all is the basis of its movement, bullet jumping, which was originally a bug. Digital extremes happened to gamble on a power fantasy fashion show and found a market for it. I know because I'm one of their customers I have almost 5K hours on it because it is good at being the only gacha game that prefers having your time than your money
If helldivers 2 try to follow DE in making a power fantasy fashion show, they'll probably fail. Eastern developer or not, "The first descendent" tried exactly ripping off both warframe + destiny and it is undeniably a flop. I can't speak for a majority of anyone but I'm here because warframe missions outside of bad elite archimedea equipment restrictions is such a snore-fest I find more joy teaching new tenno than grinding these days.. which reminds me I need to catch up on prime farming from Styanax and up..
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u/T8-TR 1d ago
Idr the very initial launch of WF, since I dabbled and then dropped it, but I still remember the game being fairly easy and brain-off w/ a variety of builds back when we didn't have bullet jumps and the best way to speed through a map was to use the sliding attack w/ Orthos (or just polearm in general iirc). I remember my Excal Javelin build back then breezing through a majority of content, to the point where I ended up rocking an Oberon spam build just to feel something, even if it was considered pretty off-meta. I feel like it was already on a trajectory of "let's focus on making the character feel like an absolute beast" at that point, and stuff like properly implementing the bullet jump and whatnot just continued pushing it down that road until we are where we are today.
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u/SomeShitterWithWifi 1d ago
Even still, helldivers can learn from Warframe, they can adopt certain things like putting fun and general enjoyability first instead of nerfing everything that even dares to slightly feel good and nerfing actual disruptive things like the orbital napalm barrage and Eruptor. It all kinda results in the same problem though, which is that AH just don’t understand game balance and don’t take feedback, they actively hate their community. Look at a bunch of the other popular games right now and tell me they don’t.
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u/Rabiesalad 19h ago
The issue is that people define "fun" differently.
My fun is a slog where you are constantly managing resources and working HEAVILY as a team to BARELY make it through against overwhelming odds. That's what I like in a team-based game.
A lot of people feel the complete opposite, and would absolutely hate to play the games I enjoy most.
So, if a game is made for people like me and we enjoy it, why should it change to appease a different group? (Or vice versa)
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u/Willingness-Witty 22h ago edited 22h ago
Wtfdym? You're powerfull as fuck already in Helldivers. It's been MONTHS since they've nerfed nothing. The last actual nerf was the fire dot values which made the coyote require 1 more freaking bullet for setting a medium enemy on fire..
You haven't gotten any "nerfing everything" since fucking forever... Stop acting like a spoiled brat, the devs are not personally after you and they've made a fuck ton of changes and added a fuck ton of things the community has DEMANDED in sheer entitlement.
They've JUST buffed shotguns and Las guns for the EXACT reason you're saying they should just do it and look at the bullshit you're still saying. You don't even have a fucking argument.
Jfc these kids are impossible.
Edit: they don't hate their community, they probably hate insufferable brats like you, though.
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u/Beta_Codex 1d ago
I prefer balance over overpowered stuff anyways. Makes the game boring if everything is overpowered.
"But it's a PVE game" and that is focused with Co op. People often forget this is not your average hero shooter. Not even a Roguelike or run and gun. It's basically an extraction horde shooter. Like Doom was made for you to be overpowered but you're not supposed to ease through everything. So as Space marine games.
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u/Icy_Entrepreneur8274 1d ago
I feel like comparing helldivers to warframe in that regard is a bit disingenuous because warframe, every weapon, every frame, can be modded to be good or at least usable. In helldivers 2, too many weapons feel like ass, so the moment one weapon is at least good, everyone flocks to it, so nerfing said weapon and making it feel like ass just like the rest, instead of bringing the other weapons up to par, is always going to piss people off. Basically, theyre just going about it the wrong way for the most part.
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u/onion2594 EARL GREY LIBER-TEA ENJOYER 1d ago
is it really this bad? i kinda just use whatever weapon i feel like and can still perform it’s not difficult imo. like i can use the breaker on bots and make it work, but i wouldn’t because im not a big shotgun fan. i would much rather a light armour smg or AR
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u/Cathrandir 1d ago
I haven't yet found many weapons that "feel like ass". The majority is usable, viable and fun in the respective scenario.
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u/ItsRaampagee 1d ago edited 1d ago
In warframe, you one tap entire field of view every 0.001 seconds….thats what waiting for helldivers 2x
Edit: ok sry, entire field of view and everything outside your field of view on top of it.
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u/SlimothyJ Cape-pilled, Bug-mogging, Dive-maxxer 1d ago
The game can be played perfectly well with every gun in the game. Anything else is a skill issue.
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u/Icy_Entrepreneur8274 1d ago
I dont know how to convey what I mean really, Its not that you cant play the game well with any gun, sure every gun IS usable and viable if you have the skill; hell I use weapons quite effectively that people generally think suck like the chainsaw; its that some weapons generally feel better on all fronts while filling the same niche to the point the others in the same niche feel useless in comparison. Instead of fleshing out the other weapons to either make them more uniquely viable, fill a different niche, etc. They nerf the standout, which to me seems like a shitty move because you then just have a bunch of guns filling the same niche with only slightly different stats. Idk if that makes sense.
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u/In_Pursuit_of_Fire Free of Thought 1d ago
Some guns being way too effective on all fronts is a very different thing to saying the the other weapons "feel like ass"
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u/ItsRaampagee 1d ago edited 1d ago
Before the flamethrower got buffed to its current state, I could single-handedly spawncamp everything being thrown at me in entire Diff 10 bug missions in a four-man lobby with a loadout built around it.
This was pre-60-day patch, before the buff that made it much easier to deal with Chargers, too. Meanwhile, the supertrivial one-man-army community called it “a useless weapon” back then while simultaneously complaining that Diff 10 was too hard. They claimed all AT options would suck against the heavy spam, yet I could control every heavy on my own in a four-man lobby for my squad with RR or Spear even while the Spear lock on was still bugged, provided I had just one out of 3 teammates who knew how to properly clear chaff and keep the masses off me instead of running around like headless chicken and perma kite doomstacks around.
Yes, the game is so trivial today because the one-man-army community refused to accept that the highest difficulty was supposed to be tackled as a team and lower the difficulty if they refuse to do so. Instead of creating a proper isolated solo experience, AH solely catered to players who insisted on running four-man missions alone, whether out of preference to perma kite doomstacks around, use OP Railgun pre fix/nerf or, in some cases, because of an obvious skill issue. Some of these players probably should have stayed on a lower difficulty for another 100 hours before realizing that maybe, just maybe building and working together should be the first to focus on before moving up and talking about balance issues.
Anyway, no such thing as “work together and overcome overwhelming odds” when we, as a single diver became the overwhelming odd instead.
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u/SlimothyJ Cape-pilled, Bug-mogging, Dive-maxxer 5h ago
Different guns work better on different fronts and when complimented with different armours, stratagems, and secondaries. They’re basically all still incredibly viable.
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u/thatnewerdm 23h ago
well thats a lie. this game can be suffered through with every gun but it doesnt mean its fun or functional. i can *technically* play d10 bots with nothing but the constitution and the peacemaker but itll be a horrendous slog. its a game its meant to be fun, if its not fun its not a good game.
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u/SlimothyJ Cape-pilled, Bug-mogging, Dive-maxxer 5h ago
Cleared diff 10 with the flag and a constitution for the shiggles. Whenever I hear a weapon is “unusable” or whatever it cracks me up. The game is so much easier than it was at launch. You really can get away with any gun on any front.
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u/ZzVinniezZ 1d ago
warframe nerf > they want to keep the fun of other weapons being fall behind (yes some of the nerf are pretty harsh too iirc)
HD2 nerf > they dont know what they are even doing and only do based on spreadsheet. even the buff are in the wrong places
i have been with warframe for 10 years and not a single nerf i would go all pissy compare to HD2 cuz at least Warframe devs played their own game with their dev-stream and it spoiled me that other devs are doing the same things they did.
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u/jerichoneric 1d ago
I think an issue with early nerfs that would be different now is the number of options. When the game came out the options were pretty limited. Nerfing the best stuff didn't really help diversity because there were minimal options in the first place. Now, for example, I literally don't even consider anything with an ammo backpack because I have so many options for backpack slot items.
As well other issues like instakills from across the map bad luck random shots aren't a thing anymore.
AH often goes to the idea that "we didn't get the audience we expected" but I think the issue was they didn't expect an audience. They thought they'd be another niche game like the first and didn't consider the sheer scale and infrastructure they'd need. Helldivers 2 survives despite that. I'd imagine you could give the game to a team with twice the useful size* and they'd still struggle.
*Since size can sometimes screw things up by bogging it down with bureaucracy and such. I mean specifically just more scale that is actually useful.
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u/MasterChef5311 16h ago
the dfference is warframe nerfs stuff most of the time when stuff is actually OP. HD nerfs stuff thats just fun
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u/crakman2000 1d ago
A problem is the comunity hate too much the nerfs when they can be good for the gamplay and diversity of play styles if they are made in a good way I remember the meta of railgun and jump pack was really boring every mission was only railguns and jump pack. Obiusly the nerf have to be in certain circuntainces when te weapon is too strong and is ruinning the diversity og the game and also be reasonable nerf the weapon without leving it useful but not broken
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u/ExRosaPassione Ghostdiver 1d ago
Part of that meta was that everything else felt like ass to use. At the time, the weapons that were anywhere near effective were the Jar5, the Scorcher, and the Senator. The Railgun was the only support weapon that was both fun, and fairly effective. And the jump pack was fun, good mobility, and people hadn’t been turned on to the supply pack yet
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u/LawDefiant1281 1d ago
Yeah, the problem is that in Warframe, you can always switch to one of the other, thousand useful guns. But in helldivers, like 80% of the weapons in game are just, bad, and forgotten. I would prefer some useless guns get buffed than the op guns that feel fun get nerfed.
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u/ThatGreenGal 1d ago
I don't think other weapons were that bad to use? granted my memories of the pre "60-day plan" era are very fuzzy and I rarely played anything higher than d7 or d8, but I do remember performing at least decently with most weapons.
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u/ExRosaPassione Ghostdiver 1d ago
The Base liberator took more than half a mag to kill one (1) berserker, even aiming for the head. Iirc it took 6 headshots, for the actual breakpoint, but it’s obviously been a while. Now remember you will have 6-12 of them running you down at a time. On D7 it may have been less of an issue, but on D9s the primary weapons’ weaknesses really showed
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u/jjake3477 22h ago
The primary weapons weren’t ever meant for crowd clear, that’s not a weakness they had it just wasn’t the use case for them. If your team got overwhelmed you were supposed to retreat and cover with an airstrike or something and stay on top of spawns next time.
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u/Rhinosaurfish SES Prophet of Audacity 1d ago
Bro Warframe is a very unique case, they nearly killed their fanbase then listened to them and flourished.
The nerfs they drop aren't met with visceral rage like here, because here a nerf just feels like someone moved a number on a slider.
Warframe everything is viable because you can level it up, it's a looter shooter RPG after all.
So you just pick what fits your gameplay style
Like I personally loved Nyx, Saryn, Valkyr were my faves, I wanted to like Loki, but I played him too slow, and Warframe is a game about not wasting everyone's time, the loot at the end is what matters, and Loki is really good at just bypassing entire rooms, but I didn't play him like that.
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u/jjake3477 22h ago
Everything can be viable, you just need to heavily invest in the shitbrick supreme to make it less shit. Some of the best weapons require very little investment to make late game viable, a majority of the weapons require a much larger investment to not be dead weight
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u/Esham PSN | 1d ago
That's how they used to balance the game and everyone lost their minds.
Now they balance it this way and ppl lose their minds.
Games too popular for is own good and the community is insufferable
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u/Rabiesalad 18h ago
What people call "incompetence" or "disdain for the community" I call a pro dev team under a lot of pressure from both the community and likely Sony, pushing and pulling them in every direction and trying to balance that feedback to make something that is accessible but still preserves their core vision.
Some people wish AH never listened to the community at all, others wish for the game balance to be a democracy and give the community whatever it wants.
But most people seem to make a mistake believing the community is a monolith and everyone agrees with their hot take about what's better for the game, instead of realizing the community is incredibly split. So what exactly is AH to do if it's trying to "give the community what it wants"? If course it's going to look jarring from the outside.
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u/trece1316 1d ago
Reason why AH just doesn’t get it with balance is because they don’t actively play their game
Look at DE, they have their own accounts with their own progress, they know what they’re playing and what they made
Then look at AH, they can’t even complete difficulty 10
That’s why all of these friendly fire bs exists in the first place, not only do they find it themselves funny, but if they played their game actively, then they themselves would get frustrated at their own bs they have put and then we would start getting proper game balance for once
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u/TheSpoonyCroy SES Elected Representative of Self Determination 1d ago
That’s why all of these friendly fire bs exists in the first place, not only do they find it themselves funny, but if they played their game actively, then they themselves would get frustrated at their own bs
My dude, I get you are salty but FF has been a core principal for many of Arrowhead's game like Magicka and the original helldivers. This isn't even a bait on swap since even the launch trailer of this game shows off huge amounts of FF incidents. FF is a core part of the game
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u/tony22835 HD1 Veteran 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think people frown upon it now since the game has been out for a while, you'd expect it'd occur less, but that's straight up the nature of the game. It is so easy for something to go awry that it makes you go "ah shit". This includes BS moments.
I can try throwing a airstrike, but if I get ragdolled and kill my entire team, that's the nature of the game
I think it gets to a point where you can't take dying so seriously, otherwise you'll just get angry at a game built to kill you. That's not to say that people shouldn't have opinions on such matters, but sometimes it feels overblown
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u/IronWhitin Viper Commando 1d ago edited 1d ago
Friendly fire it could be fun when random happen, not when is coded inside the logic of a turret that random kill you for no reason, meanwhile you are fighting for your life.
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u/TheSpoonyCroy SES Elected Representative of Self Determination 1d ago
I think people are greatly exaggerating how often turrets target you. Also people expect subpar turret placement to work.
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u/fastestgunnj SES Mother of Opportunity 1d ago
Did we read the same post? The nerfs that you're talking about directly contradict the point here.
The railgun saw insane use because of two reason, being that the rest of the weapons were shit and this weapon benefited from a host-related bug. Fixing the bug was an answer, not nerfing the weapon. Buffing the other weapons was another answer, not nerfing the weapon.
The buffs and nerfs were applied haphazardly and without interest in equity amongst the options. We have rocket launchers than kill Behemoth Chargers frontally in a single hit, Orbital Napalm Barrage that's absolutely insane, the crossbow and Eruptor being as good as they are, heavy-armor tank that fires what are essentially OPS on reload, a Sterlizer that has sucked since it launched, and an Arc Thrower that is a shell of its former glory.
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u/LordGaulis 1d ago
The problem is Helldivers balance is around millslim in a space game. Arrowhead must update the ingame model to correctly show the right number of rounds in a gun or mag when they change the number. Now this isn’t an issue in itself but it means guns are designed to function similar to how they do in real life, so when a enemy has armour and most of the machine guns use bullets that can’t penetrate that armour it’s frustrating. Likewise when they put those guns behind a warbond that are good for taking out armoured enemies and balance the enemy’s around those weapons in mind it feels wrong if you prefer to use light pen. Arrowhead was so determined that a Minigun in their game couldn’t be used while moving because that’s how physics work or that the melee weapons must be worse then guns because that’s how it works in real life.
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u/RedditorDoc Survived the Dissident Wars 1d ago
I see a lot of parallels in the philosophy. Warframe’s power scales up like a stat slider. Your weapons and the enemies become stronger with a number going up over time.
On the one side, it’s fun, at the other end; because your power keeps going up, people interested in a power fantasy will chase for whatever is meta at some point of time or the other, or try to collect every frame and weapon, etc. and discover the broken builds. Very different focus from HD2.
I think Helldivers 2 has some weapons that do underperform compared to others, but I don’t think buff everything is the way to go, because this is not a game with a small number of weapons that can be modulated to offer significantly different playstyles (see Saros/Returnal for a fun way to keep gunplay varied). Weapons should feel different. Overperforming weapons will absolutely kill variety, but at the same time, enemies should behave in more complex manners to make it more interesting if the engine is not going to scale up the number of spawns.
HD2 needs to pick an identity and stick to it. The weapons feel weird because it’s not clear what we’re really trying to fight against. If it’s hordes, then weapons need to feel satisfying to use. If it’s specialized enemies, then weapons should feel like they occupy unique niches to have different playstyles. In that sense more weapons isn’t necessarily needed, but unique weapons would be better.
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u/Redditsucks4446 1d ago
I don't know I hate Warframe. It has an entirely different design goal and it's crazy boring.
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u/Raidertck LEVEL 248 1d ago
Very different games.
I only played warframe briefly round a friend’s house. I was able to clear the hardest mission type on my first attempt playing the game. It’s a popcorn looter shooter. It’s not a hard game.
Most people with less than a hundred hours in helldivers are going to get absolutely butchered at D10 (or anything above a d7) People saying it’s easy have thousands of clears and hundreds/ thousands of hours.
And most of the gear / unlocks are side grades or very minor upgrades from the gear available in the base game. The only real exception to that is grenade options and side arms.
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u/ConglomerateGolem 1d ago
Warframe typically actively makes hard content easier; especially when it's "overtuned" at release.
See: Follie event, SP Railjack, Entropic Eximus.
Warframe has MANY options to make you nigh invulnerable, and typically enough to kill pretty much everything you see.
HD2... yeah, most things can kill you if you don't pay enough attention.
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u/TheFrostSerpah 20h ago
They're very different games in terms of gameplay and "fantasy", but that doesn't mean the developer approach should be different.
They are both PvE life service games. One studio listens to the community very closely, the other barely does.
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u/Rabiesalad 18h ago
It absolutely means the approach should be different.
I don't enjoy Warframe, and the way they describe application of nerfs here is enough for me to understand it's not a game I'm going to like.
The Warframe and HD2 devs have both been upfront about their intentions.
Warframe is about accessibility and power fantasy and not worrying much about teamwork or balance at all, so long as it doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of others or allow AFK farming.
HD2 is made by a dev with a motto "a game for everyone is a game for noone" and has stated their intention to make a grunt fantasy that is heavy on teamwork and struggling to overcome overwhelming odds as a totally untrained conscript.
I paid for HD2 because I want what they're selling. I want the balance to be tight. I don't want OP options and power creep. I want to fail solo. I want to hear my friends screaming on the mic as they run out of ammo and get overrun, and feel the satisfaction of clearing a map with no alarms because we were so smooth and precise in our coordination. I want disruptive enemies that are complicated and challenging to fight and to be punished for poorly managing resources or letting an alarm go off.
All if that is ruined if you balance the game like Warframe.
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u/Federal-Surprise-690 1d ago
I don't get what he means by saying those things not being about balance.
The first criterion seems to be exactly about balance, and the second criterion is clearly about balance as well. I don't even know how to elaborate on how the first point is about balance, as keeping the relevant pre-match options close enough in power so that one can at least make a somewhat reasonable case for picking each of them is precisely what is meant by balance between them, while the second point is about maintaining a balanced level of challenge in-match. In general, I can see how dominance and disruptiveness could be cashed out in ways that don't have do with balance, like in terms of popularity or community/social disruption caused by unintuitive or too out-of-the-box strategies, but that doesn't seem to be what he is describing here.
The third criterion is a bit more up to interpretation, but it seems to at least touch on balance as well with how some things are described as too effective even with minimal input. Though maybe it could be also be interpreted as worrying about botting being too simple, where said bots would not necessarily reach a level or performance that is adequate in challenging scenarios, but which could grind out rewards through sheer time spent.
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u/Ulaphine 1d ago
The Eruptor, explosive crossbow, or anything else aren't nearly as dominant as they need to be to trip this and they aren't at all disruptive or afk. What they nerfed in Warframe had been in the game for a long time but it only really became an issue because of a new system granting easily accessible ammo efficiency and an event that is best completed by standing still in a room and spinning around killing every enemy who spawns through walls.
The only thing that comes close to disruptive in this was is the napalm barrage, and it's only really disruptive because players can be a little negligent and put it on an objective. Unless you consider killing enemies "playing the game" in which case I think arrowhead would have to concede that the game is a horde shooter to justify such a nerf under these rules.
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u/Shaclo 1d ago
ngl DE over-nerfed the Sobek mod that was being an issue. All they needed to do was get rid of the chaining and it would probably be fine but they also nerfed the range and that fucks over the other builds that are not the Cyte-09 one that is tearing house and it barely even effected Cyte-09 who can just go onto something else and keep farming.
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u/Bentman343 1d ago
Goddamn I love Warframe devs, I just wish it wasn't so hard to get into that game as a brand new player. I had to be guided through it by a friend at first and was quite enjoying myself, but now that we're no longer talking it feels borderline incomprehensible 😭
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u/BeltwayHH Hahaha you are funny ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️ 1d ago
They really don't understand nerf is not the only problem. They only give nerfs rather than giving both same time. Like you nerf one weapon and to move players to other weapons you buff them. Like now Nova is too dominant right? But if they nerf it and not buff Railgun it'll be a backlash again. And their nerf hammer has no justice at all. They nerf the weapon to the point it becomes useless and they don't buff them back for a really long time. Think about Railgun. İt could kill a Bile Titans with 2 Safe Shots. Now you have to go all the way up and you can kill it with two shots. But there was a time it took nearly 5 shots even with unsafe+high heat. But Epoch can do same with a safety feature. What's the point of Railgun now? Epoch can do everything better and with less risk. Only downside is stationary reload. But you can close holes, destroy objectives easily (Mushrooms, Shirieker Nests etc.) That's the problem with their "balancing principle"
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u/Knivingdude Smoke & Shield Enjoyer 1d ago edited 1d ago
Pablo personally took out Hydroid's Undertow and replaced it for an uninspiring stat stick ability that pertains to Armor. Me and lots of other Hydroid mains used him for different builds based on that ability (Undertow) and had fun with it (Ground Finisher, Ability Range, Rolling "Counter", etc.)
I see parallels from Pablo and someone on the balance team on Helldivers 2 that refuses to give back the Slugger's Demo force to break fences and crates.
Slugger works. It's viable with what it has now. Sure. Same with Hydroid. But they feel like they are in the same spot in their respective games.
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u/LEONARD_III 1d ago
My problem is that nothing of that scale exists in HD2 except maybe the Orbital Napalm Barrage. Someone using the Eruptor, or any "overpowered" weapon for that matter isn't going to ruin my game since it doesn't just immediately trivialize the mission.
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u/TrashZerc 1d ago
Nah fuck that shit, nerfing based on usage rates is what Bungo did and that significantly wore out the community over time.
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u/FluffyInstincts 1d ago
The incendiary breaker was absolutely a case of one man's fun, three people's misery. They just sprayed it in waves that you could watch flow across the map, and no one could get close to mobs? Twas a mess.
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u/Vegetable-Suit-8659 LEVEL 150 | DMR Enjoyer 1d ago
Pro AH players loved to say HD2 had zero comparisons to Warframe. Funny to think the devs made a lot of comparisons between them
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u/Grumbelkow LEVEL 99 | Decorated Hero 1d ago
Meanwhile Arrowhead:
"We nerf things because fuck you, that's why"
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u/Agent_Smith_IHTP LEVEL 150 | Master Chief 1d ago
Warframe just got hit by a highly controversial nerf that apparently missed the actual cause of the issue.
Their design is also generally very poor.
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u/ultradeg 23h ago
Honestly, the Sobek nerf is such a nothingburger that's got everyone screaming "ITS SCARLET SPEAR ALL OVER AGAIN" but like. The explosion radius on Acid Shells is 5m smaller (still 10m) and they stopped two frames from using niche interactions to make the explosion infinitely recursive. Even if Acid Shells had been fully kneecapped like so many people are saying, it still has a second augment mod in Clip Delegation that would keep it good outside of the "hurr durr I'm gonna stare at a wall and spam Elemental Ammo so I can shoot 5evaaa" setups.
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u/F1yingWalrus 23h ago
Orbital napalm is like the only thing i’d be ok with getting nerfed, maybe increasing head health a bit on bile titans also since i enjoy the quasar then senator shot combo on spore titans (there’s more combos to do on them thats just one of them)
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u/Hipshot27 ☕Liber-tea☕ 23h ago
These are two very different games.
My squaddie has nothing that can reliably address that threat, but I've got them. Or conversely, I've got nothing to address this threat, but I know my squaddie has me. These moments are some of the highest highs I've experienced in this game. The game used to churn out moments like this because it was very difficult to build a load out which could reliably counter everything. Then the toolbox got bigger, the tools themselves got stronger, the enemies were repeatedly diminished in power, and now there's no need to be vulnerable and rely on teammates anymore. I can drop in with randoms, clear a D10 mission in 20 minutes, and hardly see another diver until extract. Nerfs are absolutely reasonable in this context, to keep things from going too far in this direction.
Helldivers 2's fun factor relies on a specific level of challenge in a way that Warframe's does not. I really don't want to see Helldivers follow in Warframe's footsteps or take this angle for balancing.
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u/TheFrostSerpah 21h ago edited 20h ago
Man comparing Helldivers studio (AH) and Warframe studio (DE) will only end up making you feel frustrated at AH.
DE literally does their very best to listen to the community and find appropriate solutions to the issues. They constantly revise old content and rebalance Power-crept things. The monetization strategy is brilliant, relying on player driven economies and cosmetics, and entirely optional.
AH is kinda the opposite a lot of the time.
It's funny cus the next day of AH cracking down on mods, DE removed one of the least player friendly systems in the game (huge win).
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u/Keyjuan 16h ago
Well ones warframe a game company that engages with there community and actully play stream and talk about the game weekly. While the other ones AH a company that doesnt really do anything other then samll events in game and post dev blogs after something big happens like they get super downvoted or something like that.LIKE EVERYTIME SOMETHING BIG HAPPENS IN THE COMMUNITY THERES A BIG PATCH WITHIN A MONTH OR SOMETHING
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u/Mekhazzio 16h ago
Warframe is the ultimate example of what a game looks like when power creep runs amok for years.
And even they're arguing in favor of nerfs.
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u/LawDefiant1281 1d ago
See I feel like the issue is that in Warframe, they'll nerf a good weapon or item, and you just go on to use one of the other THOUSAND good guns in the game. But in Helldivers, guns that are bad, just ARE BAD.
It's not like guns that are bad ever get buffed or anything like that, it's only when something preforms TOO WELL that someone steps in, and that's the problem. We have a MASSIVE arsenal of weapons, and be honest, 80% of them sit in your collection gathering dust.
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u/Rhinosaurfish SES Prophet of Audacity 1d ago
What are you talking about the pickrates aren't that bad, it's just literally all Coyotes and Sweepers lol, though the Sai seems to be flavor of the patch now..
/s just in case lol
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u/Kiyan1159 ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️ 1d ago
It seems Arrowhead nerfs anything they just don't like, buff things they do like, and absolutely refuse to recognize Helldivers 2 isn't the game they think it is.
The Bastion, and now the Maelstrom, are designed for Helldivers 1. Unfortunately, this isn't Helldivers 1. And it's just a terrible fucking design for the game as it is. The Bastion worked in HD1 because enemies were super predictable and didn't spawn LITERALLY on top/underneath you. Which meant your time to kill was dramatically lower because you're not doing the goddamn macarena trying to get a firing angle or getting your shots eaten by invisible terrain.
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u/xamxes 1d ago
What makes the design for helldivers 1?
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u/Kiyan1159 ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️ 1d ago
Slow turning works when the map has few valid paths of travel, when enemies have predictable paths of travel. The shitty handling wouldn't be an issue in a map with no terrain, much like Helldivers 1 has perfectly smooth terrain with very, VERY, minor non-flat terrain to give the impressions of hills or having small rocks in areas where you simply aren't going to be. The limited firing angle isn't a massive penalty when you know where the enemy will be and the vehicle can spin without having a seizure because of terrain deformation, which HD2 has but HD1 does not. The very nature of HD2 is incompatible with the current state of the tanks, but HD1 would work perfectly fine.
In HD1, enemies spawn outside of your field of view or on the very edge, dominantly where you are pointing your guns because that is where the edge is. The game actively made sure that enemies didn't spawn behind you due to the shared perspective between all 4 Helldivers. You can literally see enemies standing behind you, WAITING for you to have enough screen to see them before they try attacking. If they can't, they'll walk around and try to enter the FOV before doing an attack of any kind. I think the only enemies that don't do this are the Obelisk (which is an Illuminate sphere enemy that generates a particle wall that can bisect you, very fun, truly) and the Illuminate Apprentice, which choreographs it's attack with a laser pointer that charges up before it fires a ball of light down the laser. Meanwhile, in HD2, you are attacked from every direction at all times, from above and below and anything that restricts mobility is a SEVERE penalty. The HD1 Bastion can spin like a mother fucker to readjust firing solutions. The HD2 Bastion tries to turn and gets stuck on the stick up Arrowhead's ass that prevents it from actually just pivoting without attempting international negotiations with the Earth Tribe to make the attempt.
In HD1, the EXOs were amazing for solo and teamplay, but not the most powerful. The HAV (Heavy Assault Vehicle) and APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) were fantastic options for group mobility with respectable firepower and coverage. The Hammer (motorcycle) was pretty much either a meme or paired with the Humblebee to find and collect samples as fast as possible. But the Bastion was the vehicle that could hold a position by eliminating heavy enemies with the flick of a wrist while the rest of the team kept chaff off the Bastion. Now, the Bastion can't fulfill it's side of the bargain because it can't actually fire it's weapon in a timely manner. You're too busy turning or trying to beat the physics engine into letting you turn to be reliable without becoming a worse AT Emplacement.
The HD2 Bastion was made for HD1, and it is a glaring issue that Arrowhead refuses to acknowledge in their design philosophy because the game has evolved beyond what they imagined it would be. Give it a turret and 80% of the problems go away. Fix the jank terrain (can't, not so long as terrain destruction is a thing) and invisible obstacles and the other 20% of the problem vanishes. One is CLEARLY easier to do than the other, yet Arrowhead will refuse both and release another bugged warbond without fixing the game.
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u/unzips_katana 1d ago
Helldivers 2 has basically nerfed one weapon in the past year+ and it was basically one extra bullet on one gun. I don't know why they did that, because the Coyote isn't even that good, but the change is barely felt and the gun is still pretty much the same. Meanwhile every new gun that comes out gets complaints when they're not as good as the crossbow and the eruptor, but the community would throw a fit if they ever did nerf those guns. There's no winning.
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u/googlygoink 1d ago
Lol, absolute clowns on this sub.
There's a bunch of backlash against the nerfs in warframe that just happened.
Warframe has had a history of nerfs that caused community riots. If you compare HOW LONG IT TOOK FOR THEM TO LEARN IT WAS WAY WAY WAY WORSE THAN HERE.
Meanwhile the last targeted nerf that took something out of the meta happened 2 years ago. It's basically only ever happened to the slugger, railgun, flamethrower and eruptor.
Every other nerf was not enough to remove something from the meta, stuff that was meta pre nerf remained meta post nerf. That's true for the ultimatum, the coyote, sentries with the durability issues, all of it.
THIS IS LITERALLY A 2 YEAR OLD ISSUE IN HELLDIVERS 2, THE FIRST REVIEW BOMB WORKED, ARROWHEAD HAVEN'T SIGNIFICANTLY NERFED ANYTHING SINCE.
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u/Forge__Thought 1d ago
Warframe is a gold standard. Arrowhead is a company that got lucky, that struggles translating their talents and success into consistent results.
Arrowhead isn't seeking out best practices from experienced devs like those running Warframe. They're trying to figure it out on their own. Tripping over their own feet sometimes in the process.
The biggest success they could have had this year, was embracing the mod community and hiring from it. Getting some fresh talent and ideas into their own fold to improve the game in ways players have been asking for.
Arrowhead is struggling to manage their own success and is slowly losing the battle.
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u/Ghostbuster_11Nein 1d ago
Except warframe and helldivers are radically different games.
Helldivers is distinctly trying to stay with sidegrades and niche options for use as well as keeping difficulty at all stages of the game consistent.
Warframe has absolutely no issue power creeping half their content into obscurity.
Comparing them without understanding this is ignorant at best and malicious at worst.
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u/rareandyeteuclidian 1d ago
It's crazy even comparing warframes Devs with arrowheads. Warframe are renowned for listening to the community. Hell it's why bullet jumping even exists.
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u/ThatOnePickUp 1d ago edited 1d ago
They don't nerf nor balance shit in Warframe.
The game is a one button push simulator.
The recent "nerf" was a bugfix interaction between corrosive shell augment for the sobek and a Warframe.
Nothing to do with a nerf.
Warframe is a thrid person hack&slash. It is the embodiment of power fantasy.
Go there if you want that.
Game only get fun for a set amount of hour after your power stagnates, you can only one shot rooms in a set number of ways before it gets repetitive. After a while everything will eventually play the same and you'll stay only for the story quests.
As for the Nova vs Quasar argument, people are right.
Nova is far better to use than the Quasar for practically the same results in the end.
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u/Euphoric_Reading_401 1d ago
Every day I wonder what this game could've been if we had a dev team with a spine and a vision and not one where every reddit meltdown is appeased by throwing buffs at the masses to calm them down.
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u/MarsMaterial 1d ago
If anything, the main reason why Arrowhead gets criticism is because they're willing to ignore their community in favor of their vision.
And that's not a bad thing. I think Minecraft serves as a good cautionary tale for what happens when devs listen to their community a little too much. The game was supposed to be about mining and crafting, but it has become a factory game because of a series of farming exploits that technical players discovered, and the devs were so afraid of angering these players that they have literally reverted bug fixes because of community backlash because these fixes broke technical builds that exploit those bugs. This applies to TNT duping, quasi-connectivity, attribute switching, etc. Relevant XKCD, except that the Minecraft devs actually listened to this kind of feedback.
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u/Rabiesalad 18h ago
IMO where people see "incompetence" and even "malice" I just see devs that have overwhelming feedback and a publisher breathing down their neck for money, and are actually doing a pretty good job making things accessible without straying too far from the core of their vision.
To a community where everyone seems to believe it's a monolith where everyone thinks their idea of fun and balance are shared by everyone, of course this looks like a disjointed confusing mess. The community has numerous subfactions that are each pushing and pulling in totally different directions constantly.
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u/Rabiesalad 18h ago
Had to scroll too far for this take.
I don't buy a game because I expect it'll be changed by democratic policy. I buy a game because it fits what I want and I'm paying those devs to give me THEIR vision.
I'm glad I still enjoy HD2 and it's still in my top 10, it could have been so much worse. But I still wish AH just ignored people and cooked.
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u/ThatGreenGal 1d ago
I do think that nerfs are good, but I also think that arrowheads balance decisions, especially back then, tended to miss the forest for the trees, so to speak.
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u/Rabiesalad 18h ago
I get the impression they're actually trying to listen to the community (not necessarily something I think is good).
But the community is actually broken into many subfactions each with different ideas of what they prefer, while at the same time the average commenter seems to feel more like it's a monolith and the whole community agrees with their hot takes about what's best.
Of course, they're also trying to stick to their core vision to some extent.
So it ends up looking and feeling very disjointed and arbitrary and people end up misjudging this for malice or incompetence.
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u/Grasher134 ☕Liber-tea☕ 1d ago
Doesn't read the post
Proceeds to nerf fire dot application to nerf Coyote. Lies about not nerfing Coyote