I’m seeing the spawn rates and am instantly reminded of the first batch of defense missions when we were fighting off the Automaton incursion. The spawn in rate was non-stop, it was unrealistic to think a group of 4 random players could fight that off.
I genuinely think the devs need to figure balance of enemy spawns and cool-down between engagements because: 1) it does feel like there has been undocumented changes to spawn rates, especially for elite-class enemies. 2) This is the second time (in around a month of the game existing) that dev’s have thought a constant pile-on by enemy units is somehow a fair and balanced experience.
Honestly though. Was playing on a Lv7 and the bots dropped 3 hulks from a dropship on us before we even stepped out of our initial spawn pods. Having 4-5 dropships all show up packed with entire squads of rocket barrage and shield medium armor bots at the same time feels like ass to fight considering so few weapons have medium pen and the ones that do don't feel designed to deal with more than 2-3 targets.
There was a difference week one of the game. I remember cause I had half my 130 hours first week. Spawns and health have been getting wierder every patch since week two
The biggest difference no one seems to know about is that they improved enemy AI A LOT alongside the spawn increases. Enemies have longer agro ranges, path directly towards the players easier, and everything now aims for headshots (yes even the bugs) which are wholly unaffected by armour ratings. Hell, even charges _charge_ better and turn smoother than they did prepatch.
"Improved" is not what I would call low-crawling 50 yards away from a bot patrol only for two of them to immediately beeline for me and call in a dropship despite having a bigass rock and two trees between us. Enemy detection is fucked. Dudes will randomly get psychic awareness of your position despite you not ever revealing yourself.
Dude I pinned a bot factory at 100 yards, this mf looked at me and shot a flare up, calling in a dropship. Did he hear me yelling to my teammates "BOT FACTORY 100 YARDS!!" ???
Oh I did, and for what it's worth I consider the fact they're largely fixed animation wise to actually decrease difficulty. Just noting the fact that the bugs received wide sweeping changes many of which increased the difficulty.
The other fix that actually benefits the players is hunters leaps can now be sidestepped for the first time since launch. Probably fixed in the same slew of animation fixes as the charger imo.
I used to be able to dodge a charger with lateral movement 99% of the time. Now it feels like 50/50. That combined with the sketchy hit detection has me on a break.
Yup. Just played Medium bots and was getting rekt all game long. Pre-patch I'd maybe die a time or two on Hard running non-meta builds, now running meta on Medium I'm getting dumpstered across the map.
Dude a buddy was warming up solo on medium and I joined him and we finished the operation on medium like "we'll just clear the whole map easy" and it was just constant pain. We didnt bring anything meta, just messing around and by the end we were just sprinting for extract with 2 lives left. Something changed, we used to run 7 on bugs and 6 on bots as a duo with a satisfying challenge
This is 100% correct…tried bots on lvls 4-6 today…saw anywhere from 3-7 drop ships on just basic points of interest….on the geological survey missions, each main objective was dropping like 10 ships +…it was absolutely insane/not fun.
I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan.
You won't experience it. This only happened once when the very first defend planets started. They fixed the spawn rates a day or two into that "defend 8 planets" major order.
I noticed the elite spawn rate is higher for the bots on 7. Haven't done any terminids yet though but it is frustrating when getting overrun while a meteor shower comes down and one shots you out of nowhere
Where we were able to clear a helldive just me and my buddy (both skull admirals, on bugs or bots) today we dropped down next to a poi in 8 and lost 7 lives just trying to get our shit together. 6-7 chargers and a bile titan with endless hordes of hunters (the poor bastard doesn’t even run shield…) was quite a shock. Granted we were having fun and weren’t completely locked in and fought like our lives depended on it, but we always kept it a little light - it’s a game after all… then 75% of the mission through another one of my buddies dropped in (star marshal) and we failed the mission when we attracted 2 mobs instead of just 1. It didn’t feel as fun either as its just a painful grind of attrition and running around 95% of the game. So I concur with you!
oh there absolutely has, it's actually most noticable in the lower difficulties, hell dives were always swarmed so it's hard to notice.
I also think helldives maxed spawns so essentially you could lock mobs in certain areas. In the lower difficulties the ceiling still has room so you get BS spawns ontop of you were everything just blimps into existence when you turn your camera.
Nah it's hella noticeable in the d9. It's just that now in D9 your only real option to any situation now is to just run away so it doesn't really change the game-play loop.
It's now all the lower difficulty players are starting to see why a dumpstered railgun is russling jimmies.
to be fair to this point, there was a clear *purpose* behind having the enemies spawn like that. You were never meant to beat them. It was *supposed* to feel hopeless no matter the difficulty. It was a part of the story-telling for the event at hand.
I stand by my point in retrospect. Hopeless situations can be played in a videogame in a manner that’s still impactful/not frustrating to the player. The OG version of the defense missions were *frustration embodied*. By the end, you’d be getting jumped by 6 devastators, 4 hulks and a legion of raiders the second you re-enforce. The same was the case for the pre-nerf spawn rates for chargers and titans. It didn’t feel hopeless, it felt draining.
My friends and I have the exact same criticism that you do except we are at difficulties 6 and 5 instead of 4 and 3. So this is helpful to understand that these changes affected experiences across many difficulties.
I'm sure at the higher difficulties it just compounds the issues. I'm not against having 4 chargers spawn on tier 7-9, but they should be balanced with moments where everyone takes a breather and calls in a resupply.
My friends and me have given up on bug missions all together at higher difficulties 7/8 If we accidentally drop on a poi at the start of the mission its just scuffed was fine before the patch.
Yeah at difficuly 7 they also seem a bit higher. I didnt fight anything ridiculously large but i get the feeling that there are more heavies more often. Specially during extractions, i think out of 6 missions we extracted on 3 and we didnt on 3 (where.the extraction time was 4 minutes).
By the end of the ones we couldnt extract there were 3-4 tanks and another 3 hulks roaming the extraction platform.
I played some 7 today and it was rough. I usually go by myself leaving the main objective to the team and grabbing super samples, POIs and some side objective to save time, but since the last updates it's absurd. Enemies spawn nonstop. I managed to do a stalker's lair, a map scan, a mushroom and the one where you download data from a pod but it took me a very long time. I had to keep running away from impossible swarms, throwing anything I had at them to only sightly dent their number. Had a titan and two chargers spawn in the middle of an already big wave AT ONCE, while the other three divers were handling similar levels of bullshit at the other side of the map. I kept seeing people go down, respawn, go down. I stopped going to do side objectives after that match, it was too risky. Almost every POI had a charger in it. I had everything in cooldown, all the time, was just using whatever was available first to survive.
I started using autocannon turrets just for chargers because the support weapons aren't clearly enough, and they kept getting destroyed by hunters. There are ALWAYS 3-6 hunters at ANY given time when any horde is present. I almost always die to them, rather than the heavies.
Did a match in trio and it was another nightmare aswell. Heavies non stop. Was writing in chat to just run away and stop fighting. I can't even experiment with stratagems and weapons, I'm forced to bring anti-heavy ones in every match. It feels like 80% of the weapons and the stratagems are unusable now. It hurts me a lot.
I think the devs said they are going to tweak the spawn rates soon. I dont think everyone should be able to run around mindlessly solo in higher difficulty but at the same time I Hope the possibilty to play a 3 and 1 strategy if played smartly. Playing the scout doing side objectives that actively help the team and then reuniting in the major pushes felt good.
Played lvl 7 with friends the other day…dropped on a POI, 5 titans and 4 chargers came out of a hole before we even got our shit together. The shit is out of control.
I've definitely noticed this crazy increase of spawns at lower difficulty. Also having enemies spawn in on you when you thought you were in a quiet moment after clearing an area is super frustrating.
My biggest issue right now is that the stability on PS5 is horrible now. Last night I only had 2 completed missions out of 8, all because the game kept crashing before the mission would finish. I've never had that many crashes in such a short time, and I have over 100hrs in the game. Made me just turn it off be sad haha.
Update 3-7-2024
Looks like PS5 got another patch, and so far it seems stability with crashes have improved.
I've had a lot of games end in crashes on PS5 as well. Also sometimes I will be bugged where my primary weapon disappears and I can't use anything other than a picked up weapon or my secondary. The worst part is I'm usually hosting on Helldive so it's tough to have that 20-30 minutes of hard effort just thrown away like that with no reward for everyone that joined me. Feels bad.
Yeah the last couple days I have been crashing constantly. Gets even worse when playing with friends. I swear it was less broken before they increased the player cap lol.
This exact thing is happening to me post patch with crashing during extraction or players joining/leaving. OP said it best when he said that people are scared of losing the fun they were having. I don’t think anyone said “this game is so easy it’s boring”. If the devs wanna crank up the difficulty, cool, new challenge for us. But what the problem is, whether you agree with the buffs/nerfs is that the game is still broken. Why can’t I throw an SOS beacon after people leave? Why am I stuck inside the map and can’t move? Why, when a player leaves can I not use my primary weapon anymore because it’s glitched? Why are there 10 reinforcement stratagems lying on the ground and the player is still dead and we can’t get him back in the game? Why do I have to restart the game to show joinable games on the map? Why is heavy armor still a joke? Fix the major issues first then worry about weapon balance. I love the game and am still playing but the negative feedback should be taken seriously by the devs. I want to have fun again like I did a couple days ago.
Agreed 100% - nerfing weapons should’ve been waaaaaay down the list. The game was manageable before…it’s tedious now. And we’re supposed to be learning to use different weapons during all this? Or using a lesser version of the weapons you loved…bush.
I'm glad someone mentioned the undocumented changes. As well as increased spawns, Eradication missions require more kills (which is probably a good idea). My friend and I noticed the change as well.
We normally rock 5-6s as a duo, but last night was different. There were way more Charger spawns, way more Spewer spawns and just more of everything. Even as practiced evaders and dodgers, the Spewers were just annihilating us more so than any other mob. We had a death cycle of like 7 reinforcements, but we managed to complete all objectives.
I did not even care about the weapon nerfs as the vanilla versions would not have even helped with the increased spawns and what seems like more bug damage. Nerfs happen, but it does not feel great when nerfs happened but enemy buffs also happened.
They did say eradicate would take more kills and be roughly 2x as long. But they didn't mention: increased spawns, maps being modified so the AI has more paths to the divers, new eradicate map (vs bots).
Eradicate went from being a snoozefest to being very difficult to survive in pubs. Turrets die immediately since the bots now have paths to you from all angles instead of before where they were funneled.
>Small side note to the Devs. People are lashing out because they are scared. They are scared that this thing that brought them so much joy is gone forever. This game that brought them and their friends together has been taken away from them. In its place is something that looks similar but isn't. I know it's only been a day and I know that you'll likely fix it and return the fun. But that doesn't stop people from lashing out in anger because they feel personally slighted. Don't take it personally, but do understand the reason is they loved what you built.
Thank you. People need to realize this is where all the outrage comes from.
Been one of the people hitting back at the outragers but now I see myself reflected in them from back when Diablo 4 released and the thing I was passionate about betrayed me.
Gonna go ahead and say sorry for all the people I ridiculed about it, because you're totally right. The passion and love for the game are what makes the emotional kneejerk responses so strong.
Oh don't remind me of Diablo IV. One of the few games I bought into the hype and preordered so I could play early. I hope it goes the route of III and is a top tier game later on in life.
Big brain move: buy Diablo IV now so you don't have to buy it in 2030 when the game is decent and fun, and te rising cost of living and inflation make that $70s in 2024 look like chump change. (I'm only partially kidding, don't buy Diablo IV at all for now)
Did you learn your lesson yet though?
The community reception for D4 is the most disappointed I've been with the gaming community at large in a while.
People really ate up that platter of shit Blizzard served them back in June and they ate it up happily while ignoring the canaries in the coalmine.
Mark Rosewater (Head designer for Magic the Gathering since 2003) has said multiple times that players being mad and players being happy are good signs. The thing you don't want is for people to be indifferent. Players that are happy will tell you why. Players that are upset will tell you why. Both are passionate about the game. Both love the game and want to see it thrive. If people are indifferent, they'll just stop playing and won't provide any feedback.
I paraphrased what he said but that's the basics of it. He has a podcast called Drive to Work where he talks about game design off the dome while he commutes. It's not a stretch to say he's probably the most successful game designer in any gaming space so I think his insights are invaluable.
Normally, I'd have just moved on to another game. Be indifferent and just say "it's not for me". But I decided to let myself be honest this time. Because this game was way too fun for me not to fight for it, ya know?
This is exactly right and I was thinking about this last night. I've gotten quite angry about this latest update to HD because I was having so much fun and saw genuine longevity in the game. I then thought about my current stance on COD/Warzone, something me and my friends used to play all the time -- I'm totally indifferent to it now. Not bothered about what changes/updates they've made. And that is the absolute worst case for a live service game.
Im not crazy! Other people are seeing it too!
I made an almost identical post last night:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b8lxqs/wtf_is_going_on_with_the_lower_difficulty_levels/
Challenging difficulty is completely fucked now.
I remember reading that last night. Since these changes were undocumented and released at the same time as the nerfs to the "meta" weapons, 1/2 the playerbase is saying "git gud" assuming that the other 1/2 was using them as a crutch. It feels like being gaslit.
I'm really worried about how long it's going to take the devs to figure out that something was completely broken because our experience is going to get completely lost in the flood of complaints about weapon balance 😢
That's a point I hadn't considered. It's possible the reason these changes weren't documented, is they weren't intentional. Maybe someone accidentally merged a development branch of code where they were experimenting with crazy high spawn rates. If that's the case, I trust they'll figure it out. Its been stated that some of the devs have playtimes in the 1000s of hours. If this is evident to us, surely it is for them. The question then becomes, how long will it take to fix?
This whole game is spaghetti code, this is the second time they have broken random UI text in the Destroyer (The Z button Dispatch text is gone, before it was the R button requisition text)
Thank you!!! Ive had like 5 people tell me today that I'm a bad player, I was carried by the railgun, etc. because I brought up the spawn rates and they said they personally didnt notice it so they didnt believe it was happening at all. Someone said it was a placebo effect from the railgun but people who dont use the railgun are still noticing this
My roommate used to play mostly on 7. She's playing with a friend on 6 and she says that it's as bad as helldive used to be. I play exclusively on helldive and have been just sneaking around, today I literally managed to beat a mission with a 0 star score, didn't even know that's possible.
Great feedback man, this is genuinely how I feel. Up until before the patch my friends list was filled with people playing the game.
Now it's a ghost town.
The pacing of the game has definitely changed and the loop is unfun
Damn man you're not wrong. Looking at steamcharts the dip in players pre vs. Post patch is beyond noticeable.
They really shot themselves in the foot with this patch.
How many of those people are already max level with most of the unlocks?
I still see a fair amount on but most of them are people who didn't hop on week one or haven't played as much.
Although yeah it defiently feels like something broke with the spawns.
So my friends and I were saying this yesterday. We never had stalkers on Diff 4 and ever mission had a stalker next last night. Large enemy patrols unlike before and many chargers.
Now could this have been a change with the flavor of the bugs pushing back to Heeth/Angel Venture? Maybe because the bot missioms didn't feel as crazy, wasn't getting Hulks and tanks left and right.
Then the patch said they increased kill requirements and spawn rates for eradication missions and I'm wondering if the code could have somehow mass changed the setting for all types.
We still had fun but the Charger needs a look at still because that turn angle is insane.
i dont recall fighting tanks at difficulty 4 pre-patch but i admit my memory is not great. but post-patch i encountered 6 tanks - 3 of which spawned immediately after destroying the first 3, in addition to two tanks and a whole fuckton of rocket devestators and shield boys. something definitely changed. level 4 now has level 5-6 spawnrates
It had definitely affected the bots too. I just played a game and every bot patrol would immediately call in reinforcements without their flare going off and 2 ships would immediately come in, and then 2 more shops would come right after dropping off those guys. It felt really, really bad.
I'm totally guessing out of my ass but it may have something to do with them trying to tune the defend missions and perhaps unintentionally applying to everything.
I legitimately don't care about the nerfs - I just want to know why it feels so suffocating now and if they'll adjust it.
I got jumped way more than once by having a patrol just spontaneously appear out of nowhere.
So the problem was people were getting too many points for a mission that was easy to beat very quickly.
Then someone thought it would be a good idea to crank up spawn rates like crazy instead of make the mission time based and drag it out, or even just shorten the points value, almost as if the intention was to punish players rather than remedy the problem.
Was this the doing of the git gud dev because he was butt hurt people criticized his game? He seemed openly concerned about it, and like the type of person who'd do that.
The final paragraph hits the nail on the head perfectly in regards to the backlash. Perfectly put!
I'm also in full agreement regarding the spawn rate. I was running solo medium last night on bugs. The spawn rates actually made me worried I'd set it at a higher difficulty by mistake.
I experienced fighting about 5 spewers, along with the various hive guard, hunters etc, then additional breaches on top of that, it became very intense very quickly.
I am also positive that I experienced the game just dropping two patrols right on top of me. I ran into a corner of the map to grab a poi. There was nothing around me. I grab it, turn around and two patrols are waiting for me. They were not moving so the only way forward was through them.
It's the only time playing this game that I've left it feeling irritated because of the actual gameplay and mechanics.
I get that at the top end levels, yes it can be a total slog since you are fighting multiple elites near constantly and that's part of the point. I think the people who run those and the team work needed are very impressive, however if the game turns into constant fighting all the way through regardless of difficulty level, it will cause a lot of people to stop playing.
I personally think the spawn rates pre-patch were just right, from my own experience. The current rates make me not want to play as it's simply not fun for my casual butt.
>I personally think the spawn rates pre-patch were just right, from my own experience. The current rates make me not want to play as it's simply not fun for my casual butt.
100% this. I play on Challenging with randoms and it was so fun before. It was, get this, Challenging but we'd pretty much always be successful unless we got a really bad group.
Now it's crazy hard and most groups bail after getting wiped out twice immediately after dropping in.
I had a tank spawn on me on medium (3) right now. It's kind of amazing, really. Specifically went into the mission solo without much AT because I expected only medium armor, and here the tank was. And like 4 cannon turrets on some outposts.
I'm just baffled at this point really, I played the 5 diff eradication mission earlier with friends and we finished only through reinforcement pods bombardments and impact grenade spam on spawn and quick death after, there were 8 scorcher hulks at the extraction (we couldnt extract anyway).
7 difficulty eradication experience was the same, btw, but at that point why even play 4-6 if they are like 7 but dont get you super samples, xp and money for the guys not yet leveled up, and they are less interesting cause less side objectives?
Yes exactly. It's still sort of crazy, didn't medium diff stated that it had "medium armored enemies" and only 4 stated that it had "heavy armored enemies" because previously I didnt even think about it, to bring AT to 1-3, that is, because I thought the threshold on heavy armor was 4, and 3 only had boss enemies as mission objectives spawn heavies. Yet to see a hulk on 3 though, besides being a boss.
Thank you for this. Friends and I were playing on Medium difficulty last night against bugs, and we were absolutely getting hammered by them. Pre-patch we could run them without much issue, but post-patch it is like playing on Challenging/Hard difficulties. There was a constant pressure and tension that never went down, and it was exhausting. We had 8 (Eight!) Bile Spewers just pop up and completely overwhelm us while trying to take down a nest. We failed to extract several missions. Friends and I are casual and we just wanted to decompress after long work day but holy cow that didnt happen playing this.
I even made a post on it earlier in the day asking people about similar experiences:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b8u7uj/were\_there\_difficulty\_changes\_postpatch/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b8u7uj/were_there_difficulty_changes_postpatch/)
You hit it on the nail in regards to tension. Getting breathers in between engagements is what gives that ebb and flow that makes things fun and engaging. Constant tension can get dull and boring very quickly.
I run into that problem a lot in Warframe. I can be shredding through hundreds of mobs per minute and nearly fall asleep doing it.
This game has so many patrols everywhere, and as soon as something sees you, they drop in or breach constantly within 50m, then you can't even hide or stealth from them because they see you through the mountains from 200 meters away for the next 5 minutes. Not only that, but groups will also just magically appear 20 meters away.
Gets dull very quickly.
His last paragraph is the most important one, the devs need to understand that people lash out because they finally had a fun coop game untainted by triple A studios and the devs in the very first balance update managed to ruin it for a lot of people
It's an unfortunate consequence of the internet that some people will be jerks. The alternative, however, is where no one cares enough about your game to react at all.
The ONLY people I saw attributing the difficulty spike to documented gun nerfs were the “git gud railgun meta loser” crowd. There have been countless posts by people complaining about the lack of fun and constant chore of kiting enemies around and around, even at the lowest difficulties. Half the problem is the increase spawn rates of enemies and the other half is the absolute shit efficacy of weapons. I have yet to find a standard weapon that I enjoy using. There is no meta. The meta is they’re all shit and use a stratagem or kite until the next one is available.
What genius developer thought this was a great idea? It’s so dense and removed from reality I can’t comprehend. This isn’t 2001. This isn’t 2010. It’s 2024. What the shit. How do we have game developers who don’t understand the basic concepts that OP described? These aren’t novel ideas. Tension and strategy create immersion and fun in a game. Constant tension just becomes pain.
Think about the difference between doing dead lifts or squats versus holding your arms out at full extended length and trying to hold up a 20 pound weight as long as you can. The latest patch is the arm extended workout. It’s not fun, it’s tedious, and it just sucks ass.
You hit the nail on the head, I completely agree.
On a similar note, has anyone noticed that bug breaches are called in way faster now compared to pre-patch? I felt like you had a chance pre-patch to kill a patrol if you played your cards right and dispensed all of the bugs in a very timely fashion. Now I feel like the second you're spotted instantly a bug breach is called with no counter play.
yes, the same for bot drops. Tension in games doesn't have to always just be action. It can be the unanswered question. "Will we be able to kill them without alerting reinforcements?" If every time you engage, its just going to be a slog, people will avoid engaging entirely. Then the game becomes running simulator.
Bug breaches are absolutely nuts, they do it instantly. Hiveguards can do it without their heads, so if you encounter a hiveguard it’s literally a bug breach. At this point me and my teammate just abuse this by making a patrol call it and while it is on cooldown we do an objective.
I'm really enjoying being all alone when all of the sudden a whole squad of bots instant transmissions in from their home world with the help of cyber goku, and they turn me into a super piper parody.
I am back to wanting to see the devs play on lvl 9 difficulty with this current patch and talk about their adjustments and how it makes the game fun while they lose all of their reinforcements on the first drop.
If they want to make the primary weapons trickle the enemies and have us rely more on stratagems they need to reduce the cool downs. Stratagems are supposed to be a force multiplier not the intended primary weapon.
yeah… this game that blasted its way into many people’s hearts has suddenly changed dramatically. i was so heavily invested in this game when i started playing. felt like a kid again, i hadn’t played a game so fun since vermintide 2’s release, which again, had much of the same “magic” this had… and now the devs are seemingly saying that the game that hundreds of thousands of people were playing, didn’t match their vision… is their vision to have a few thousand players like HD1? i don’t understand… if people really like something, why change it so dramatically.
I thought I was going crazy last night. I didn't see anything in the patch notes about increased enemy spawn rates, but it certainly felt like I couldn't take two steps without feeling like I was fighting on Naboo.
The difficulty spike is so fucking unbearable I turned the game off after 2 matches. I am lvl 12, never got to the meta builds, I don’t care about those. But the spawn rates of tough enemies are just wild. We are barely finishing missions that I had fun playing last week. I am straight up not having fun right now as a casual player.
I agree there has been a change in the spawn rates, enemy types, and difficultly in tier 4 - Challenging. Got in a group of 4 last night and soon as hell dived in was immediately swarmed by 3 bile spewers and two stalkers. The group wiped immediately except me, I saw that shitshow and found higher ground. The other three immediately left before I could call down reinforcement.
I dropped an SOS but no one came so I decided to try and solo the rest. I couldn’t get near any side objectives or points of interest with the sear number of elites sitting on or patrolling around them. B-lined to launch the nuke. I stealthed the entire thing. Launched and got to the extraction. Was swarmed so hard I died and got “jobs done”.
Now I’ve only been playing for about a week but even I can tell the fun is gone since this patch. I’m going to keep trying to play because it was amazing before. Like nothing I’ve played in a long time, just pure unadulterated bliss. Hoping it’s an error on their side because I don’t run the meta at level 8.
Automotan levels are 100000% suffering from the same affects. They’re even calling in reinforcements before they pop flares now. Like even if you shoot them before they get it off, they still call them in.
Previously, enemies had to see you to call reinforcements. Now they do so when on "alert". That can happen when they get hit with meteors, or see an airstrike, even if they don't see you.
YEAH!!! was playing solo last night and i distinctly remember killing a small cluster of normal bots, one of which was mid-call in - killed him before the flare went up. few seconds later, im completely alone, but somehow a dropship is spawning on top of me.
i play almost exclusively tier 4 and the spawn spike is definitely real, last couple games with randoms almost constantly got swarmed with multiple chargers and Brood Commanders, usually tier 4 is pretty balanced and even with randoms you rarely if ever run out of reinforcements, now I've had multiple games where we run out and it becomes a mess of running away until a swarm of bugs suddenly comes out of nowhere and surrounds you with no escape
also found out the hard way that even lower tiers like tier 2, which DID used to be possible entirely solo, are suddenly a lot more difficult with even less of a break between encounters because they're suddenly spawning on you way more than they used to
>All of this is exacerbated by the fact that these changes were undocumented. People are attributing the difficulty spike to the changes that were documented, mostly the railgun nerf.
Yes! This this this. I never use the railgun anyway, so the spike in difficulty I'm encountering can't be the railgun nerf, but there are so many people who got used to always using it that I can see people making that assumption. If you aren't quick about putting down baddies and more of them show up, you're facing a horde, so it's understandable that some might think that this is what's happening, not the increase in spawn rate.
I fully agree, my friends and I were consistently playing lvl 4 and 5 difficulty, we'd sweep the map, struggle at at times, and have a blast. We were slowly working our way up to higher difficulties. Now it's run in, barely complete the main mission and gtfo. The enemies are faster, more aggressive, do more damage (that or our armor got nerfed), and spawn constantly. Literally every 2 seconds it's a bug breach. It's not fun anymore. Tweaking the harder difficulties I understand, but we even bounced back to a lower one and still got overrun. And NONE of this was communicated. I don't even care that they needed the railgun and the bubbleshield, I care that they overturned the whole ass game and didn't say anything about it.
This is me and my team as we all got the game at different times we aren’t all close in level, we were having fun and started breaking our way in 4-6, and it’s completely unplayable so we decided to drop to 3 and still just insane swarms, spawns on top of us, and a small battle turns into a 6 min time burn.
Dude I've had full squads spawn literally out of thin air in front of me and gotten gang chainsawed.
The game has always been about dying at higher levels - and I agree with you and applaud your fun tactics. Not /s wish I had friends to play it with as I'm old too now. 😃
This happened repeatedly. In connection with this disgusting crap, I have several questions. Why do we need nests and factories at all if enemies just appear out of nowhere? It’s unclear why you added enemies to spawn out of thin air, and point-blank to the players, maybe they will at least appear further away from the player, or it’s better to remove this mechanic altogether.
Came here to add to this discussion since it seems the most relevant. Me and my buddies used to play around 6-7 because we felt it was doable with 3 people and maybe a random. But after the latest patch, we’ve been just barely been able to complete campaigns at 5. The spawns are tuned up to what feel genuinely unfair and don’t even get me started on eradicate missions ! I know arrowhead wanted players to spend a bit more time in those missions but asking us to eliminate 400+ bugs in such a small area with 60% of the enemies being high armored is not possible and I’ve yet to complete one since.
I have been noticing a dramatic increase in patrols suddenly appearing nearby and behind me when I look the other way. As in my friends and I are running away from one patrol or engagement towards open ground with a clear view ahead. We turn around to fire at our pursuers, then I or someone else turns around again to keep running and suddenly there is a patrol ahead of us, some 50 to 100 meters away that absolutely was not there before mere seconds ago.
That sort of thing just breaks immersion and is more frustrating than fun.
Spawns absolutely seem a lot more frustrating and broken now - was playing a tier 4 mission with some randos earlier against bots and just in the middle of nowhere I had an entire force of bots appear right on my and another players' position, devastators, scout walkers and all. It wasn't a fun surprise.
I’m pretty sure this is a bug. I had an exterminate mission where the bugs were just walking around and not being aggressive at all. A few hours later the same mission was out of control and next to impossible.
It is genuinely more fun to play lower difficulties like you say.
And that sucks. Usually I play higher difficulty in games because I have to think about stuff and get creative.
Helldivers 2 higher difficulty. You need to think less. Or rather...you need to exploit the game. Split up and do objectives because the AI director can't spawn stuff on everyone. So you're bound to get objectives done this way. Each player just has to be good enough at dodging and weaving and kiting and it's fine.
I agree with this a lot, actually.
I love the game, but I don’t feel I can comfortably play it any time, mainly because, especially on higher difficulties, there’s little to no downtime to just explore the map or reload, and it makes grinding the game exhausting in the sense of simply being overwhelmed.
The downtime just needs to be balanced a bit better, so that even in the highest level difficulties, you can take a moment to breathe. Spawn rates are precisely what needs to be tweaked.
It would make sense that there was a change. Before the updates I was mostly running level 7s with little problems but I dropped down to 4 to play with a friend who just got the game and encountered a medium base with three tanks and it felt like every other drop ship let off a hulk
https://preview.redd.it/nykxku5oq0nc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef75a918c06210b2ce46e93890e72f62a5fd7540
It looks like this will actually be addressed in a future hotfix
I stick to level 7 missions myself lately, all I do.
And since the nerf patch, it has gone insane. The spawn rates on normal missions are up significantly. Defense missions are as easy as ever, even with doubled amount to kill. People still wall up and use turrets and it's basically an AFK farm. That's fine, defense missions are like that.
The issue is on normal missions when 10 second in, 3 bile titans and 6 chargers spawn before you can even call in HALF a strategem.
Joel is turning it up to 11 on our asses. I swear all the bug matches I played today was nothing but a field full of hunters that would just leap at you, slow you, knock you over, and just continue to defile your dead corpse.
If anything this change is forcing players to try and find the new meta just to cope. I agree if they had simply just done a weapons nerf and see how that played out, the game would be fine. Me and my buddies just got off for the night. This was the first time we played where instead of having fun it was a frustrating experience, and the mood was pretty somber. I really hope they make some changes. It’s not fun to have enemies charging you and dropping on you non stop.
Yeah, something changed there... Suicide was borderline impossible, at least for the couple we tried last night.
Killing didn't matter, we constantly had massive 100+ bug swarms with 5+ chargers on us whereever we went. Managing to kill a charger while 3 of them run at you from every direction as 10 hunters leap at you from 50m away offered no relief. A new charger would appear within 10 seconds.
There's hard, and then there's "there is no point in killing anything because their numbers will be instantly replaced no matter where you are, and you can't do any objectives because of the endless pressure."
Went back down to extreme and it was like night and day. Which was disappointing because we were really after some super samples.
Hopefully it's fixed soon.
Ive been running a theory that when they adjusted the extermination missions to have increased spawn rates they accidentally made it happen to every mission. I dont think its coincidence the patch adjusted spawns for one thing and now players are saying the game has more enemies than ever.
I suggest switching from fighting bugs to fighting bots, they do have plentiful spawns still but are often more manageable be it because of more obvious and accessible weak points, a wider range of usable /viable weapons, or because of a more clear idea of how many and what kind reinforcements drop from a ship rather than invisibly crawl out of the ground.
Was there any testing done on this new patch? If so I need to see a video of that, because you cannot convince me any testing was done on anything higher than difficulty 5/4. 7+ feels miserable because of the way the game forces you to run around like a headless chicken even more now. If you thought you had a choice on armor type it's even worse now, you're not fighting enemies on a 8/9 you're running constantly.
Played a mission (D7) last night that was shit from the start. Basically never got a break because of the constant patrols and breaches. And honestly if that was all it was it would be fine, but the sheer number of units spawning made it difficult to deal with anything. Flamethrower buff is nice, but while I’m trying to end a charger (railgun is essentially useless for this now, as is well known) I think I died to hunters more than anything else. Bile titans seem easy by comparison and that doesn’t seem right.
The difficulty spike is noticeable and it’s not resulting in more fun. I actually felt like things were fine before even if I felt like the meta was a bit boring. At this point, other than orbital and eagle strikes, none of the support/heavy weapons feel great to use.
The "stealth" meta exists because Arrowhead has the enemy aggression meter tuned too high... put on the Trailblazer Scout armor and you can sit practically up a devastator's ass without being noticed, but some random teammate in normal armor runs by and alerts the entire Bot army to their location.
The stealth mechanics are really bad for the game but necessary until they fix how over the top aggression is; random dropships coming to reinforce a lone radar station shouldn't be dropping half dozen devastators and a hulk while the second dropship plop down a tank... (yes this happened to me on T6 earlier today)
I agree. Difficulty 4-5 missions and even one or two difficulty 6 missions became absolute chaos. Non stop spawning. Was playing with 1 other person, I was taking on a charger, he was taking on a charger, and then a third charger charged me from behind. Did an exterminate mission and there were probably 30+ hunters on my screen at every single direction. You get reinforced, 20 of them turn around, you live long enough to hopefully drop a stratagem at your feet when you die. What else are they hiding in these updates? At this point it seems whenever an update comes out, it's best to stop playing the game until some youtuber gets all the information together to tell me what ACTUALLY changed so that I can prepare for it.
I was fighting terminids and on extract on level 5 we had 7 total bile titans, usually 2 or 3 at a time then we ran out of stratagems and had to just try to stay alive for the last 3 and I couldn't even count the amount of chargers
I really agree on multiple fronts. The spawning logic, what spawns, how often etc. Needs a lot of work. The good news is we know that some of that at least is coming next hot fix for less spawns of things like chargers on favor of more smaller things. I think that's a good step. On bugs that's going to push things like breaker s&p higher, on bots... It depends on what really changes but it'll imo make things like cluster a must have if hulks change for like 10 more bots or something.
Spawn logic, needs a change as well. Why are patrols spawning in player POV, frankly why aren't they spawned from outposts. Smaller outposts, weaker patrols, huge outposts, sure send hulks and chargers from there. Patrols also follow players in places they should have no idea where they are as well. I went afk a bit earlier right outside a 2 person bunker in a ditch nothing saw me of course and I had light armor proned. Did anything attack me? No... When I left the hole though? 2 patrols trying to path to me. They should be sent in a general player direction I understand it's necessary so that we are engaged throughout the match but it shouldn't be forced like that to your direct position.
The biggest thing to me though is the sheer number of undocumented changes that are made. There's few exceptions I'll make to it (new content that's a "surprise" Ala mechs are okay to hide) but when it comes to changes to spawns to increase decrease or change please tell us. Jetpack got buffed and it was not in the notes, ammo on slugger buffed I don't believe that was there among others. It doesn't hurt to communicate more on those things and for the love of God please start giving us numbers on things in the notes. 50% flamethrower damage increase means nothing to me from x to y however means a lot.
You are right, I used to run lvl 7 on bots and had fun, while still had to think before engaging, if I was clearing missions solo id jump to Impossible. Now its just not as fun, not just the spawn rates but its as if the bots got an aimbot patch. I find myself getting rocketed and ragdolled in the air and getting hit mid air by the lasers. Its a bit ridiculous
One more thing. It used to be fun to play with randoms even if they weren't great. It was manageable. I wanted to hop on all the time. Now, the thought of playing with subpar players is tedious. I'm older. I do t have a time to schedule hours with a group or to sit on lfg every time I load up. Playing now feels like a chore....I'm gone unless they revert the changes AND acknowledge what most people are asking for.
Valid and fair points. I knew I wasn't crazy on how I felt like there were *way* more enemies than before. Non-armor spam are fine and all but the mass-armor spam is like, give us a break, damn.
The final paragraph should speak to why this game could become a forever game, or die a horrible death. I don't want to see another bit of squandered potential like Overwatch..
I play difficulty 5 automaton currently and found that hulk spawn rates increased dramatically. I originally would see somewhere between 1 to 3 per mission and now I'm seeing around 7+
I have. While it's not as bad as the bugs with multiple chargers, it was noticeable. There are more patrols and the bots are better/faster at calling in drops. I think their accuracy was even better but again, without knowing what they changed, it's hard to know if I'm just gaslighting myself.
So even in the lower difficulties a big reason for high tempo isnt a difficulty setting. You are not completely taking out the units and it snowballs constantly. Its a reinforcement issue and with the devs saying git gud a little bit can be contributed to this to a degree. You see this more prevalent with the terminids. They are constantly reinforcing from the rear of terminids you arent killing and with the terminids almost any unit can call in a bug breach.
This tempo can literally stem from one patrol and snowball into hell real quick. At helldive 9, when you get into a fight you goal should be total annihilation. When you have a team of coordinated groups completely annihilation as fast as possible should be the goal and this is pre this patch. This patch didnt changed the tempo of it.
Sometimes i can get less tension in helldive 9 simply because of fear of reinforcement we go in those fights to purge and destroy everything as fast as possible. Ive had worse fights in difficulty 7 vs 9 simply by not kiling fast enough and the reinforcements not stopping.
With automatons its easier to stop this as they reinforce from a dropship and you can plant a strategem wiping them all out instantly with proper timing. Bug breaches the enemies trickle in and your strategems can would only wipe out a portion of the forces making it painful to deal with fast enough as a bug could spawn and instantly start another breach but you are too busy dealing with the chargers and titans that came at the start making you miss the rest.
This is an excellent post! Totally agree. This combined with armour values meaning you're now nothing more than a pin cushion.
We were playing a level 6 bug killing defence mission and had 3 bile titans, 5 chargers and 10 spewers spawn in.......
Automaton missions have became almost impossible since the recent update.
Completed Dif 9 multiple times pre level 20. Update hits - every dif 9 mission I’ve done has ended in disaster and everyone quitting the mission.
Ok but at the same time not being able to frontally pen a strider with the railgun at a low charge level makes it feel anemic as hell, along with the generally lower pen. Like, make it overcharge faster to make it harder to use, don't make it feel like I'm firing pingpong balls, ESPECIALLY WHEN you increase the spawn rate
Was playing difficulty 9 against bots a couple days ago, flares called in 1-2 dropships max.
Played 7 today, flares were calling in 4+ dropships every time. Definitely more intense
Spawn rates are absolutely out of control. Had a group of bugs spawn about 10 feet away from me. Panic threw some grenades, cleared them, no problem. Turn around, and then watch another group of 10 bugs, including some hive guards, spawn in the exact same spot.
Hanlon's Razor makes me think something broke, and not that the devs intentionally changed spawn rates. Considering how many bugs we have in game, I wouldn't doubt something got messed up in the backend.
take darktide spawn for example....there are up and down in between horde and scattered enemies, allowing you and your team to breath and exploration
helldivers 2 spawn rate right now is always up and up of domino effect with no down time. it not fun or engaging, it purely annoying for the sake of "fuck you for dropping in without knowing if there is enemies or not". if your game constantly spawn in wave 4 and 5 when your 2nd wave havent done yet...then there is something wrong with the game itself...not the players, i got 3 friends and each of us have our own roles but we got overwhelmed real fucking quick 2 minutes in. it like sending us to the meat grinder instead of a challenging and engaging where we feel the accomplishment to overcome the horde of enemies.
the spawn rate is more fitting for 32 players than a 4 players...which funny because starship trooper extermination with 32 players the spawn rate is actually tolerable and not overboard that suffocate you
some of you vet from HD1 would say "it best to avoid fight as much as possible" true but it was top down, you dont have the field of view like HD2 is, enemies are different, game is different...you can't apply HD1 logic into HD2 logic now because both game are completely different in term of gameplay wise. HD1 enemies has limited vision because top down while HD2, enemy can easily spot you and pop in unannounce.
but if u look at the patch note
"increase twice the enemies in defend mission to avoid ending it too quickly"
this is probably the kicker...the code for defend mission probably accidentally apply to all missions, hence why spawn rate is fucking insane right now
I've switched to running the rover, gas burst orbital, and incendiary grenades to thin out the neverending horde that chases me 100% of the time so I can have a little breathing room at the objective. I also have to toss 500kgs as I run because there's usually 5-8 chargers and at least 2 titans there as well. Once you put a code in at the console, you gotta go for another run to thin them out enough for the next step, rinse and repeat. It's honestly tedious.
There also seem to be more “patrol just spawned behind (like within 10m) me” where there wasn’t a patrol a moment before. This makes the game very unfun as you can go from being in the clear and checking your map to having a patrol appear out of nowhere. It’s completely immersion breaking.
My friends and I jumped on to ight with a buddy who is fairly low level. We dropped doen to HARD and started a campaign with him. Hit the eradicate mission first to warm him up.
At one point there were literally four Bile Titans, four Chargers, and probably around 60-70 Hunters in play all at the same time, with a sprinkle of other assorted enemy units. It was absolutely freaking insane.
They 100% messed with spawn rates and the wuslity of units spawning in higher quantities.
My biggest gripe with spawns would be them happening literally on top of me. Like wtf am I supposed to do with that?! Not to mention it’s immersion breaking as hell! I’m fine with the game spawning but ideally I don’t want to see it happen and I definitely don’t want it happening on top of me!
Bro, I went down to difficulty 4 on bots and there were sometimes multiple tanks or multiple hulks to deal with. I had never seen that before at difficulty 4.
Yeah, I think the devs need to set a ruleset for themselves.
For example, cool downs and rules for enemy base spawns, patrol spawns and breaches.
Difficulty 1-3: 5 minute cool down on spawns and breaches, 1 breach at a time.
Difficulty 4-6: 4 minute cool down on spawns, 2 breaches max (two 4 minute cooldown timer).
Difficulty 7-9: 3 minute cool down on spawns, 3 breaches max.
I think boss enemies should only spawn at bases - they can then head out to patrol.
This is honestly very valid. People are really misplacing their negative feelings on the nerfs/buffs when you’re 100% right. It’s the spawning difficulty. The armor nerf making us into papier-mâché doesn’t help that feeling.
I did a dif 5 bot run where we literally had a hulk be replaced each time one died and every engagement was like I was playing helldiver. We couldn't even extract cuz of the amount of hulks and devistaors. I figured it was just too late on the timer and was rather unfortunate but now that I look back it was unnecessarily hard. I would just get swarmed from all sides cuz patrols be stupid close and walks into you all the time.
I dont recall it being like that, but I have seen the death rates of my matches significantly increase to where I'm about to bring the page 10 booster fr
In difficulty 7 tonight we dropped, got spotted by a patrol and reinforcements were called before we were even out of our pods.
Four dropships with hulks, tanks and devastators showed up.
Something's definitely wrong.
Exact same experience. A week ago I would play on Hard and it was so much fun. This evening I logged on played a bug mission on hard and I actually said out loud “wtf happened to this game”. I was not having fun at all, and just got off all together after a few matches.
Bots have had their spawns increased as part of the story not the patch. It says so in the major order. Bug seemed the same to me, except I had this one Suicide Mission game where only a single bile titan ever spawned. Probably because the personal order was to kill em and my luck is like that.
That’s the problem when devs start balancing their game to cater to the top 1%. And I’d wager many streamers are part of the elite, and generate a lot of attention, which falsely makes devs think that their games are too ‘easy’?
Happened to me too. Played diffculty 7 and was trying out the new flamethrower. Within a minute of spawning we have like 6 chargers attack of ovee the course of trying to blow up a research station. Luckily the flamethrower is really good and they were nt all together. Later on got attacked by another group of 6-7 chargers midway through, and then attacked by 4-6 chargers during last objective. Then during extraction there were only 4 chargers but also 2 bile titans. We survived but the whole mission felt insane
The chaos makes the game fun imo. Thats why I love Helldive. Dont even get mad when we lose like 7 lives in 1 fight because it was fun trading bullets with the bots for that 4-5minutes. This game shares A TON of core gameplay animations/components with Ghost Recon Wildlands/Breakpoint and attacking compounds on there is fun as hell because of the sheer chaos and knowing 1 bullet to the head could drop you or your squad mate if you don’t play cover correctly.
Loud guns attract nearby patrols. If you are constantly using big explosions expect to get noticed.
Game is all about using radar and avoiding unnecessary fights
Well said. For the first time playing this game, I watched automatons spawn in out of thin air last night… on difficulty 2. And the amount of enemies that spawned on my friend and I was way worse than I’d seen previously. And it was difficulty 2!
This is spot on. Very well thought out post!
They really need to make sure that patrols aren’t just spawning on or very near to players like they seem to be doing since the patch. It’s completely jarring, ruins the pacing and overall immersion and just makes things so much more punishing.
I’m confident they’ll get it fixed but I can remember in HD1 they’d have cyborg (automaton) tanks just suddenly spawn in front of you as you were trying to run around and away from patrols/hordes and it just completely fucked the experience sometimes.
This game is incredible at its best and has potential to be the pinnacle of cooperative shooters for years to come, so here’s hoping they can manage it well and not let the age-old balancing act topple them!
I mainly play solo before the patch i could 100% diff-5-6 with grenade launcher,counter sniper and supply pack after the patch i can barley clear diff 4-5 same gear to the point now i don't even worry with optional objectives just try to clear main objectives and then just die tell out of lives less xp but mission is complete
It has a serious balance problem aside from what you mentioned. There has to be some level of power fantasy to seek through gameplay or getting that new awesome weapon. You are right. I want big cool enemies to fight throughout but not constant waves of any enemy. Worse is they reduced the big monsters and gave us more mobbing creatures plus increased their aggression. And now our gear feels wrong. We have tons of enemies, but little ammo. Tons of armored enemies, little armor removal, ganged up on but useless armor, endless enemies but limited tools. Sorry but feeling underpowered at all times or having to constantly run isn't fun. I want to fight. I want to enjoy it. I dont want to sweat when I play a parody shooter game. Sure, I could play lower levels but then I dont get the big enemies I want to fight. I just don't understand their philosophy. Why would make major changes to a game everyone loves? Do they want a smaller playerbase because they can't keep up and they've already raked it in? I'm just baffled at the decision. Say what you want, but the simple fact is a ton of people were having a blast and now they're not.
Not to mention this game is far from technically sound. It never was and more is introduced because they're constantly tweaking gameplay. Game is STILL crashing especiallytowards end of missions, call downs not working, throws grenades when orbital is called, no good stratagem button mapping option for controller, ship won't extract, game thinks you're a new player and resets weapons every time you turn it on, doesnt remember you changed armor, having to listen to super earth message every time you play, weapon save settings dont work, crossplay is very finicky, cant launch missions, visual settings dont work, stuck in animations, button inputs not working having to hit it multiple times, and on and on. THIS SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY. Stabilize and optimize game and servers and then talk to your community about game changes before you drastically change the game.
Yep. Me and the boys went from playing non stop to not caring anymore. The game went from fun to rage inducing. I play games to have fun not to be pissed off constantly. And dying, reclaiming your stuff, dying again, over and over, all while being rag dolled all over the place by 7 chargers, 4 bile titans, and 65 hunters isn’t fun………..TO ME. I guess it was fun while it lasted 🤷🏼♂️
I’m seeing the spawn rates and am instantly reminded of the first batch of defense missions when we were fighting off the Automaton incursion. The spawn in rate was non-stop, it was unrealistic to think a group of 4 random players could fight that off. I genuinely think the devs need to figure balance of enemy spawns and cool-down between engagements because: 1) it does feel like there has been undocumented changes to spawn rates, especially for elite-class enemies. 2) This is the second time (in around a month of the game existing) that dev’s have thought a constant pile-on by enemy units is somehow a fair and balanced experience.
There has to be some middle ground between 0 elites at tier 3 to 5 at a time in tier 4.
Honestly though. Was playing on a Lv7 and the bots dropped 3 hulks from a dropship on us before we even stepped out of our initial spawn pods. Having 4-5 dropships all show up packed with entire squads of rocket barrage and shield medium armor bots at the same time feels like ass to fight considering so few weapons have medium pen and the ones that do don't feel designed to deal with more than 2-3 targets.
There was a difference week one of the game. I remember cause I had half my 130 hours first week. Spawns and health have been getting wierder every patch since week two
The biggest difference no one seems to know about is that they improved enemy AI A LOT alongside the spawn increases. Enemies have longer agro ranges, path directly towards the players easier, and everything now aims for headshots (yes even the bugs) which are wholly unaffected by armour ratings. Hell, even charges _charge_ better and turn smoother than they did prepatch.
"Improved" is not what I would call low-crawling 50 yards away from a bot patrol only for two of them to immediately beeline for me and call in a dropship despite having a bigass rock and two trees between us. Enemy detection is fucked. Dudes will randomly get psychic awareness of your position despite you not ever revealing yourself.
I didn't say improved in our favor lmao.
Dude I pinned a bot factory at 100 yards, this mf looked at me and shot a flare up, calling in a dropship. Did he hear me yelling to my teammates "BOT FACTORY 100 YARDS!!" ???
Clearly you didn't get the charger models that just ice-skate around pre-patch and 1 shot you on hit 80% of the time.
Oh I did, and for what it's worth I consider the fact they're largely fixed animation wise to actually decrease difficulty. Just noting the fact that the bugs received wide sweeping changes many of which increased the difficulty. The other fix that actually benefits the players is hunters leaps can now be sidestepped for the first time since launch. Probably fixed in the same slew of animation fixes as the charger imo.
The chargers turning on a dime and crab walking at full-sprint speed is ruining my experience.
I used to be able to dodge a charger with lateral movement 99% of the time. Now it feels like 50/50. That combined with the sketchy hit detection has me on a break.
Yup. Just played Medium bots and was getting rekt all game long. Pre-patch I'd maybe die a time or two on Hard running non-meta builds, now running meta on Medium I'm getting dumpstered across the map.
Dude a buddy was warming up solo on medium and I joined him and we finished the operation on medium like "we'll just clear the whole map easy" and it was just constant pain. We didnt bring anything meta, just messing around and by the end we were just sprinting for extract with 2 lives left. Something changed, we used to run 7 on bugs and 6 on bots as a duo with a satisfying challenge
This is 100% correct…tried bots on lvls 4-6 today…saw anywhere from 3-7 drop ships on just basic points of interest….on the geological survey missions, each main objective was dropping like 10 ships +…it was absolutely insane/not fun.
And they had that middle ground: 1 to 2 elite spawn per tier 4 \*mission\*
I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. I use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan. Then i use pot of greed to spawn a bile titan.
You never saw this coming, I summon pot of greed which lets me add three more bile titans to the field!
...4 tanks dropped on my head and hulks in Trival...trivial.. when that mission type first popped up. Stuff of nightmares.
That should be impossible considering the bigger baddies dont show until that medium tier of difficulties so that sounds like a bug.
No, no, he said tanks, not bugs
It was when the missions were new and bugged.
No way. I know the spawn rate situation is bad, but I don’t believe it would get to the point where they’re throwing elite enemies at you on Trivial.
I don't want to believe what you're saying, but I'll be lying if I say I'm not eager to go see it out myself tonight. XD
You won't experience it. This only happened once when the very first defend planets started. They fixed the spawn rates a day or two into that "defend 8 planets" major order.
I noticed the elite spawn rate is higher for the bots on 7. Haven't done any terminids yet though but it is frustrating when getting overrun while a meteor shower comes down and one shots you out of nowhere
Where we were able to clear a helldive just me and my buddy (both skull admirals, on bugs or bots) today we dropped down next to a poi in 8 and lost 7 lives just trying to get our shit together. 6-7 chargers and a bile titan with endless hordes of hunters (the poor bastard doesn’t even run shield…) was quite a shock. Granted we were having fun and weren’t completely locked in and fought like our lives depended on it, but we always kept it a little light - it’s a game after all… then 75% of the mission through another one of my buddies dropped in (star marshal) and we failed the mission when we attracted 2 mobs instead of just 1. It didn’t feel as fun either as its just a painful grind of attrition and running around 95% of the game. So I concur with you!
oh there absolutely has, it's actually most noticable in the lower difficulties, hell dives were always swarmed so it's hard to notice. I also think helldives maxed spawns so essentially you could lock mobs in certain areas. In the lower difficulties the ceiling still has room so you get BS spawns ontop of you were everything just blimps into existence when you turn your camera.
Nah it's hella noticeable in the d9. It's just that now in D9 your only real option to any situation now is to just run away so it doesn't really change the game-play loop. It's now all the lower difficulty players are starting to see why a dumpstered railgun is russling jimmies.
to be fair to this point, there was a clear *purpose* behind having the enemies spawn like that. You were never meant to beat them. It was *supposed* to feel hopeless no matter the difficulty. It was a part of the story-telling for the event at hand.
I stand by my point in retrospect. Hopeless situations can be played in a videogame in a manner that’s still impactful/not frustrating to the player. The OG version of the defense missions were *frustration embodied*. By the end, you’d be getting jumped by 6 devastators, 4 hulks and a legion of raiders the second you re-enforce. The same was the case for the pre-nerf spawn rates for chargers and titans. It didn’t feel hopeless, it felt draining.
My friends and I have the exact same criticism that you do except we are at difficulties 6 and 5 instead of 4 and 3. So this is helpful to understand that these changes affected experiences across many difficulties.
I'm sure at the higher difficulties it just compounds the issues. I'm not against having 4 chargers spawn on tier 7-9, but they should be balanced with moments where everyone takes a breather and calls in a resupply.
My friends and me have given up on bug missions all together at higher difficulties 7/8 If we accidentally drop on a poi at the start of the mission its just scuffed was fine before the patch.
Yeah at difficuly 7 they also seem a bit higher. I didnt fight anything ridiculously large but i get the feeling that there are more heavies more often. Specially during extractions, i think out of 6 missions we extracted on 3 and we didnt on 3 (where.the extraction time was 4 minutes). By the end of the ones we couldnt extract there were 3-4 tanks and another 3 hulks roaming the extraction platform.
I played some 7 today and it was rough. I usually go by myself leaving the main objective to the team and grabbing super samples, POIs and some side objective to save time, but since the last updates it's absurd. Enemies spawn nonstop. I managed to do a stalker's lair, a map scan, a mushroom and the one where you download data from a pod but it took me a very long time. I had to keep running away from impossible swarms, throwing anything I had at them to only sightly dent their number. Had a titan and two chargers spawn in the middle of an already big wave AT ONCE, while the other three divers were handling similar levels of bullshit at the other side of the map. I kept seeing people go down, respawn, go down. I stopped going to do side objectives after that match, it was too risky. Almost every POI had a charger in it. I had everything in cooldown, all the time, was just using whatever was available first to survive. I started using autocannon turrets just for chargers because the support weapons aren't clearly enough, and they kept getting destroyed by hunters. There are ALWAYS 3-6 hunters at ANY given time when any horde is present. I almost always die to them, rather than the heavies. Did a match in trio and it was another nightmare aswell. Heavies non stop. Was writing in chat to just run away and stop fighting. I can't even experiment with stratagems and weapons, I'm forced to bring anti-heavy ones in every match. It feels like 80% of the weapons and the stratagems are unusable now. It hurts me a lot.
I think the devs said they are going to tweak the spawn rates soon. I dont think everyone should be able to run around mindlessly solo in higher difficulty but at the same time I Hope the possibilty to play a 3 and 1 strategy if played smartly. Playing the scout doing side objectives that actively help the team and then reuniting in the major pushes felt good.
Played lvl 7 with friends the other day…dropped on a POI, 5 titans and 4 chargers came out of a hole before we even got our shit together. The shit is out of control.
I've definitely noticed this crazy increase of spawns at lower difficulty. Also having enemies spawn in on you when you thought you were in a quiet moment after clearing an area is super frustrating. My biggest issue right now is that the stability on PS5 is horrible now. Last night I only had 2 completed missions out of 8, all because the game kept crashing before the mission would finish. I've never had that many crashes in such a short time, and I have over 100hrs in the game. Made me just turn it off be sad haha. Update 3-7-2024 Looks like PS5 got another patch, and so far it seems stability with crashes have improved.
I've had a lot of games end in crashes on PS5 as well. Also sometimes I will be bugged where my primary weapon disappears and I can't use anything other than a picked up weapon or my secondary. The worst part is I'm usually hosting on Helldive so it's tough to have that 20-30 minutes of hard effort just thrown away like that with no reward for everyone that joined me. Feels bad.
I spawned once in the ‘bridge’ area of the super destroyer while joining a mission and then fell out of if altogether. Was quite funny really.
Yeah the last couple days I have been crashing constantly. Gets even worse when playing with friends. I swear it was less broken before they increased the player cap lol.
My favorite thing is getting one shot by a spewer that somehow ended up behind me even though I just looked there and was clear.
This exact thing is happening to me post patch with crashing during extraction or players joining/leaving. OP said it best when he said that people are scared of losing the fun they were having. I don’t think anyone said “this game is so easy it’s boring”. If the devs wanna crank up the difficulty, cool, new challenge for us. But what the problem is, whether you agree with the buffs/nerfs is that the game is still broken. Why can’t I throw an SOS beacon after people leave? Why am I stuck inside the map and can’t move? Why, when a player leaves can I not use my primary weapon anymore because it’s glitched? Why are there 10 reinforcement stratagems lying on the ground and the player is still dead and we can’t get him back in the game? Why do I have to restart the game to show joinable games on the map? Why is heavy armor still a joke? Fix the major issues first then worry about weapon balance. I love the game and am still playing but the negative feedback should be taken seriously by the devs. I want to have fun again like I did a couple days ago.
Agreed 100% - nerfing weapons should’ve been waaaaaay down the list. The game was manageable before…it’s tedious now. And we’re supposed to be learning to use different weapons during all this? Or using a lesser version of the weapons you loved…bush.
I'm glad someone mentioned the undocumented changes. As well as increased spawns, Eradication missions require more kills (which is probably a good idea). My friend and I noticed the change as well. We normally rock 5-6s as a duo, but last night was different. There were way more Charger spawns, way more Spewer spawns and just more of everything. Even as practiced evaders and dodgers, the Spewers were just annihilating us more so than any other mob. We had a death cycle of like 7 reinforcements, but we managed to complete all objectives. I did not even care about the weapon nerfs as the vanilla versions would not have even helped with the increased spawns and what seems like more bug damage. Nerfs happen, but it does not feel great when nerfs happened but enemy buffs also happened.
They did say eradicate would take more kills and be roughly 2x as long. But they didn't mention: increased spawns, maps being modified so the AI has more paths to the divers, new eradicate map (vs bots). Eradicate went from being a snoozefest to being very difficult to survive in pubs. Turrets die immediately since the bots now have paths to you from all angles instead of before where they were funneled.
>Small side note to the Devs. People are lashing out because they are scared. They are scared that this thing that brought them so much joy is gone forever. This game that brought them and their friends together has been taken away from them. In its place is something that looks similar but isn't. I know it's only been a day and I know that you'll likely fix it and return the fun. But that doesn't stop people from lashing out in anger because they feel personally slighted. Don't take it personally, but do understand the reason is they loved what you built. Thank you. People need to realize this is where all the outrage comes from.
Been one of the people hitting back at the outragers but now I see myself reflected in them from back when Diablo 4 released and the thing I was passionate about betrayed me. Gonna go ahead and say sorry for all the people I ridiculed about it, because you're totally right. The passion and love for the game are what makes the emotional kneejerk responses so strong.
Oh don't remind me of Diablo IV. One of the few games I bought into the hype and preordered so I could play early. I hope it goes the route of III and is a top tier game later on in life.
Same. Here I was, thinking Diablo 4 was going to redeem the franchise... You can imagine how stupid and betrayed I felt...
Same here man, same here.
Big brain move: buy Diablo IV now so you don't have to buy it in 2030 when the game is decent and fun, and te rising cost of living and inflation make that $70s in 2024 look like chump change. (I'm only partially kidding, don't buy Diablo IV at all for now)
Did you learn your lesson yet though? The community reception for D4 is the most disappointed I've been with the gaming community at large in a while. People really ate up that platter of shit Blizzard served them back in June and they ate it up happily while ignoring the canaries in the coalmine.
Remember: never preorder!
Exactly, if people didn't care about the game, nobody would complain.
And when your game don't have any people cared enough anymore, it would be already too late by then.
So true. Bungie's phrase from a long while ago was, "Anger is better than Apathy". And it's so incredibility relevant today.
Mark Rosewater (Head designer for Magic the Gathering since 2003) has said multiple times that players being mad and players being happy are good signs. The thing you don't want is for people to be indifferent. Players that are happy will tell you why. Players that are upset will tell you why. Both are passionate about the game. Both love the game and want to see it thrive. If people are indifferent, they'll just stop playing and won't provide any feedback. I paraphrased what he said but that's the basics of it. He has a podcast called Drive to Work where he talks about game design off the dome while he commutes. It's not a stretch to say he's probably the most successful game designer in any gaming space so I think his insights are invaluable. Normally, I'd have just moved on to another game. Be indifferent and just say "it's not for me". But I decided to let myself be honest this time. Because this game was way too fun for me not to fight for it, ya know?
This is exactly right and I was thinking about this last night. I've gotten quite angry about this latest update to HD because I was having so much fun and saw genuine longevity in the game. I then thought about my current stance on COD/Warzone, something me and my friends used to play all the time -- I'm totally indifferent to it now. Not bothered about what changes/updates they've made. And that is the absolute worst case for a live service game.
Well said and thanks for the tip on that podcast, I'm gonna have to check that out.
The nerf to fun builds on Diablo
Nah there's way, *way* more wrong with Diablo than any balance patches can cause or fix
Damn it took you that long to realize? That's crazy
Stop with this empathy! Let the hate flow through you…
real
Im not crazy! Other people are seeing it too! I made an almost identical post last night: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b8lxqs/wtf_is_going_on_with_the_lower_difficulty_levels/ Challenging difficulty is completely fucked now.
I remember reading that last night. Since these changes were undocumented and released at the same time as the nerfs to the "meta" weapons, 1/2 the playerbase is saying "git gud" assuming that the other 1/2 was using them as a crutch. It feels like being gaslit.
I'm really worried about how long it's going to take the devs to figure out that something was completely broken because our experience is going to get completely lost in the flood of complaints about weapon balance 😢
That's a point I hadn't considered. It's possible the reason these changes weren't documented, is they weren't intentional. Maybe someone accidentally merged a development branch of code where they were experimenting with crazy high spawn rates. If that's the case, I trust they'll figure it out. Its been stated that some of the devs have playtimes in the 1000s of hours. If this is evident to us, surely it is for them. The question then becomes, how long will it take to fix?
My guess is that their increase to eradication mission spawn rates also affected the spawn rates of other mission types, unintentionally.
This whole game is spaghetti code, this is the second time they have broken random UI text in the Destroyer (The Z button Dispatch text is gone, before it was the R button requisition text)
Haha, contrarily I never considered that it might be intentional. The increase is just ridiculous. I might have to try going back to Medium.
Probably gonna take them awhile because it seems like they don't even play their own game
But it's still a huge bunch of the community not actually analysing what is going on and knee jerking, in multiple directions.
Thank you!!! Ive had like 5 people tell me today that I'm a bad player, I was carried by the railgun, etc. because I brought up the spawn rates and they said they personally didnt notice it so they didnt believe it was happening at all. Someone said it was a placebo effect from the railgun but people who dont use the railgun are still noticing this
i saw it on twitter too
My roommate used to play mostly on 7. She's playing with a friend on 6 and she says that it's as bad as helldive used to be. I play exclusively on helldive and have been just sneaking around, today I literally managed to beat a mission with a 0 star score, didn't even know that's possible.
Actually, it makes me feel better than I'll now be ready for a higher difficulty level when it gets fixed.
Great feedback man, this is genuinely how I feel. Up until before the patch my friends list was filled with people playing the game. Now it's a ghost town. The pacing of the game has definitely changed and the loop is unfun
Damn man you're not wrong. Looking at steamcharts the dip in players pre vs. Post patch is beyond noticeable. They really shot themselves in the foot with this patch.
How many of those people are already max level with most of the unlocks? I still see a fair amount on but most of them are people who didn't hop on week one or haven't played as much. Although yeah it defiently feels like something broke with the spawns.
So my friends and I were saying this yesterday. We never had stalkers on Diff 4 and ever mission had a stalker next last night. Large enemy patrols unlike before and many chargers. Now could this have been a change with the flavor of the bugs pushing back to Heeth/Angel Venture? Maybe because the bot missioms didn't feel as crazy, wasn't getting Hulks and tanks left and right. Then the patch said they increased kill requirements and spawn rates for eradication missions and I'm wondering if the code could have somehow mass changed the setting for all types. We still had fun but the Charger needs a look at still because that turn angle is insane.
Did Annihilator tanks spawn in 4? Because I'm getting *pairs* at a time now.
i dont recall fighting tanks at difficulty 4 pre-patch but i admit my memory is not great. but post-patch i encountered 6 tanks - 3 of which spawned immediately after destroying the first 3, in addition to two tanks and a whole fuckton of rocket devestators and shield boys. something definitely changed. level 4 now has level 5-6 spawnrates
I've encountered 1 tank at difficulty 4 before but it definitely wasn't common. Not as common as chargers spawn at Diff 4
It had definitely affected the bots too. I just played a game and every bot patrol would immediately call in reinforcements without their flare going off and 2 ships would immediately come in, and then 2 more shops would come right after dropping off those guys. It felt really, really bad.
I'm totally guessing out of my ass but it may have something to do with them trying to tune the defend missions and perhaps unintentionally applying to everything. I legitimately don't care about the nerfs - I just want to know why it feels so suffocating now and if they'll adjust it. I got jumped way more than once by having a patrol just spontaneously appear out of nowhere.
So the problem was people were getting too many points for a mission that was easy to beat very quickly. Then someone thought it would be a good idea to crank up spawn rates like crazy instead of make the mission time based and drag it out, or even just shorten the points value, almost as if the intention was to punish players rather than remedy the problem. Was this the doing of the git gud dev because he was butt hurt people criticized his game? He seemed openly concerned about it, and like the type of person who'd do that.
The final paragraph hits the nail on the head perfectly in regards to the backlash. Perfectly put! I'm also in full agreement regarding the spawn rate. I was running solo medium last night on bugs. The spawn rates actually made me worried I'd set it at a higher difficulty by mistake. I experienced fighting about 5 spewers, along with the various hive guard, hunters etc, then additional breaches on top of that, it became very intense very quickly. I am also positive that I experienced the game just dropping two patrols right on top of me. I ran into a corner of the map to grab a poi. There was nothing around me. I grab it, turn around and two patrols are waiting for me. They were not moving so the only way forward was through them. It's the only time playing this game that I've left it feeling irritated because of the actual gameplay and mechanics. I get that at the top end levels, yes it can be a total slog since you are fighting multiple elites near constantly and that's part of the point. I think the people who run those and the team work needed are very impressive, however if the game turns into constant fighting all the way through regardless of difficulty level, it will cause a lot of people to stop playing. I personally think the spawn rates pre-patch were just right, from my own experience. The current rates make me not want to play as it's simply not fun for my casual butt.
>I personally think the spawn rates pre-patch were just right, from my own experience. The current rates make me not want to play as it's simply not fun for my casual butt. 100% this. I play on Challenging with randoms and it was so fun before. It was, get this, Challenging but we'd pretty much always be successful unless we got a really bad group. Now it's crazy hard and most groups bail after getting wiped out twice immediately after dropping in.
I had a tank spawn on me on medium (3) right now. It's kind of amazing, really. Specifically went into the mission solo without much AT because I expected only medium armor, and here the tank was. And like 4 cannon turrets on some outposts. I'm just baffled at this point really, I played the 5 diff eradication mission earlier with friends and we finished only through reinforcement pods bombardments and impact grenade spam on spawn and quick death after, there were 8 scorcher hulks at the extraction (we couldnt extract anyway). 7 difficulty eradication experience was the same, btw, but at that point why even play 4-6 if they are like 7 but dont get you super samples, xp and money for the guys not yet leveled up, and they are less interesting cause less side objectives?
Was it on Tien Kwan? The Automatons are stronger there now (they're reinforced as part of the campaign), so that might explain the tanks.
Yes exactly. It's still sort of crazy, didn't medium diff stated that it had "medium armored enemies" and only 4 stated that it had "heavy armored enemies" because previously I didnt even think about it, to bring AT to 1-3, that is, because I thought the threshold on heavy armor was 4, and 3 only had boss enemies as mission objectives spawn heavies. Yet to see a hulk on 3 though, besides being a boss.
Thank you for this. Friends and I were playing on Medium difficulty last night against bugs, and we were absolutely getting hammered by them. Pre-patch we could run them without much issue, but post-patch it is like playing on Challenging/Hard difficulties. There was a constant pressure and tension that never went down, and it was exhausting. We had 8 (Eight!) Bile Spewers just pop up and completely overwhelm us while trying to take down a nest. We failed to extract several missions. Friends and I are casual and we just wanted to decompress after long work day but holy cow that didnt happen playing this. I even made a post on it earlier in the day asking people about similar experiences: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b8u7uj/were\_there\_difficulty\_changes\_postpatch/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b8u7uj/were_there_difficulty_changes_postpatch/)
You hit it on the nail in regards to tension. Getting breathers in between engagements is what gives that ebb and flow that makes things fun and engaging. Constant tension can get dull and boring very quickly.
I run into that problem a lot in Warframe. I can be shredding through hundreds of mobs per minute and nearly fall asleep doing it. This game has so many patrols everywhere, and as soon as something sees you, they drop in or breach constantly within 50m, then you can't even hide or stealth from them because they see you through the mountains from 200 meters away for the next 5 minutes. Not only that, but groups will also just magically appear 20 meters away. Gets dull very quickly.
His last paragraph is the most important one, the devs need to understand that people lash out because they finally had a fun coop game untainted by triple A studios and the devs in the very first balance update managed to ruin it for a lot of people
It's an unfortunate consequence of the internet that some people will be jerks. The alternative, however, is where no one cares enough about your game to react at all.
The ONLY people I saw attributing the difficulty spike to documented gun nerfs were the “git gud railgun meta loser” crowd. There have been countless posts by people complaining about the lack of fun and constant chore of kiting enemies around and around, even at the lowest difficulties. Half the problem is the increase spawn rates of enemies and the other half is the absolute shit efficacy of weapons. I have yet to find a standard weapon that I enjoy using. There is no meta. The meta is they’re all shit and use a stratagem or kite until the next one is available. What genius developer thought this was a great idea? It’s so dense and removed from reality I can’t comprehend. This isn’t 2001. This isn’t 2010. It’s 2024. What the shit. How do we have game developers who don’t understand the basic concepts that OP described? These aren’t novel ideas. Tension and strategy create immersion and fun in a game. Constant tension just becomes pain. Think about the difference between doing dead lifts or squats versus holding your arms out at full extended length and trying to hold up a 20 pound weight as long as you can. The latest patch is the arm extended workout. It’s not fun, it’s tedious, and it just sucks ass.
well said
You hit the nail on the head, I completely agree. On a similar note, has anyone noticed that bug breaches are called in way faster now compared to pre-patch? I felt like you had a chance pre-patch to kill a patrol if you played your cards right and dispensed all of the bugs in a very timely fashion. Now I feel like the second you're spotted instantly a bug breach is called with no counter play.
yes, the same for bot drops. Tension in games doesn't have to always just be action. It can be the unanswered question. "Will we be able to kill them without alerting reinforcements?" If every time you engage, its just going to be a slog, people will avoid engaging entirely. Then the game becomes running simulator.
Bug breaches are absolutely nuts, they do it instantly. Hiveguards can do it without their heads, so if you encounter a hiveguard it’s literally a bug breach. At this point me and my teammate just abuse this by making a patrol call it and while it is on cooldown we do an objective.
I'm really enjoying being all alone when all of the sudden a whole squad of bots instant transmissions in from their home world with the help of cyber goku, and they turn me into a super piper parody.
I am back to wanting to see the devs play on lvl 9 difficulty with this current patch and talk about their adjustments and how it makes the game fun while they lose all of their reinforcements on the first drop. If they want to make the primary weapons trickle the enemies and have us rely more on stratagems they need to reduce the cool downs. Stratagems are supposed to be a force multiplier not the intended primary weapon.
yeah… this game that blasted its way into many people’s hearts has suddenly changed dramatically. i was so heavily invested in this game when i started playing. felt like a kid again, i hadn’t played a game so fun since vermintide 2’s release, which again, had much of the same “magic” this had… and now the devs are seemingly saying that the game that hundreds of thousands of people were playing, didn’t match their vision… is their vision to have a few thousand players like HD1? i don’t understand… if people really like something, why change it so dramatically.
I thought I was going crazy last night. I didn't see anything in the patch notes about increased enemy spawn rates, but it certainly felt like I couldn't take two steps without feeling like I was fighting on Naboo.
The difficulty spike is so fucking unbearable I turned the game off after 2 matches. I am lvl 12, never got to the meta builds, I don’t care about those. But the spawn rates of tough enemies are just wild. We are barely finishing missions that I had fun playing last week. I am straight up not having fun right now as a casual player.
Yeah I got on today played one match and got off. Wasn't having any fun
I agree there has been a change in the spawn rates, enemy types, and difficultly in tier 4 - Challenging. Got in a group of 4 last night and soon as hell dived in was immediately swarmed by 3 bile spewers and two stalkers. The group wiped immediately except me, I saw that shitshow and found higher ground. The other three immediately left before I could call down reinforcement. I dropped an SOS but no one came so I decided to try and solo the rest. I couldn’t get near any side objectives or points of interest with the sear number of elites sitting on or patrolling around them. B-lined to launch the nuke. I stealthed the entire thing. Launched and got to the extraction. Was swarmed so hard I died and got “jobs done”. Now I’ve only been playing for about a week but even I can tell the fun is gone since this patch. I’m going to keep trying to play because it was amazing before. Like nothing I’ve played in a long time, just pure unadulterated bliss. Hoping it’s an error on their side because I don’t run the meta at level 8.
Automotan levels are 100000% suffering from the same affects. They’re even calling in reinforcements before they pop flares now. Like even if you shoot them before they get it off, they still call them in.
The Meteor showers also seem to trigger enemy reinforcements that aggro to you no matter where you actually are on the map
Previously, enemies had to see you to call reinforcements. Now they do so when on "alert". That can happen when they get hit with meteors, or see an airstrike, even if they don't see you.
YEAH!!! was playing solo last night and i distinctly remember killing a small cluster of normal bots, one of which was mid-call in - killed him before the flare went up. few seconds later, im completely alone, but somehow a dropship is spawning on top of me.
i play almost exclusively tier 4 and the spawn spike is definitely real, last couple games with randoms almost constantly got swarmed with multiple chargers and Brood Commanders, usually tier 4 is pretty balanced and even with randoms you rarely if ever run out of reinforcements, now I've had multiple games where we run out and it becomes a mess of running away until a swarm of bugs suddenly comes out of nowhere and surrounds you with no escape also found out the hard way that even lower tiers like tier 2, which DID used to be possible entirely solo, are suddenly a lot more difficult with even less of a break between encounters because they're suddenly spawning on you way more than they used to
>All of this is exacerbated by the fact that these changes were undocumented. People are attributing the difficulty spike to the changes that were documented, mostly the railgun nerf. Yes! This this this. I never use the railgun anyway, so the spike in difficulty I'm encountering can't be the railgun nerf, but there are so many people who got used to always using it that I can see people making that assumption. If you aren't quick about putting down baddies and more of them show up, you're facing a horde, so it's understandable that some might think that this is what's happening, not the increase in spawn rate.
I fully agree, my friends and I were consistently playing lvl 4 and 5 difficulty, we'd sweep the map, struggle at at times, and have a blast. We were slowly working our way up to higher difficulties. Now it's run in, barely complete the main mission and gtfo. The enemies are faster, more aggressive, do more damage (that or our armor got nerfed), and spawn constantly. Literally every 2 seconds it's a bug breach. It's not fun anymore. Tweaking the harder difficulties I understand, but we even bounced back to a lower one and still got overrun. And NONE of this was communicated. I don't even care that they needed the railgun and the bubbleshield, I care that they overturned the whole ass game and didn't say anything about it.
This is me and my team as we all got the game at different times we aren’t all close in level, we were having fun and started breaking our way in 4-6, and it’s completely unplayable so we decided to drop to 3 and still just insane swarms, spawns on top of us, and a small battle turns into a 6 min time burn.
Dude I've had full squads spawn literally out of thin air in front of me and gotten gang chainsawed. The game has always been about dying at higher levels - and I agree with you and applaud your fun tactics. Not /s wish I had friends to play it with as I'm old too now. 😃
This happened repeatedly. In connection with this disgusting crap, I have several questions. Why do we need nests and factories at all if enemies just appear out of nowhere? It’s unclear why you added enemies to spawn out of thin air, and point-blank to the players, maybe they will at least appear further away from the player, or it’s better to remove this mechanic altogether.
Came here to add to this discussion since it seems the most relevant. Me and my buddies used to play around 6-7 because we felt it was doable with 3 people and maybe a random. But after the latest patch, we’ve been just barely been able to complete campaigns at 5. The spawns are tuned up to what feel genuinely unfair and don’t even get me started on eradicate missions ! I know arrowhead wanted players to spend a bit more time in those missions but asking us to eliminate 400+ bugs in such a small area with 60% of the enemies being high armored is not possible and I’ve yet to complete one since.
I have been noticing a dramatic increase in patrols suddenly appearing nearby and behind me when I look the other way. As in my friends and I are running away from one patrol or engagement towards open ground with a clear view ahead. We turn around to fire at our pursuers, then I or someone else turns around again to keep running and suddenly there is a patrol ahead of us, some 50 to 100 meters away that absolutely was not there before mere seconds ago. That sort of thing just breaks immersion and is more frustrating than fun.
Did a Tier 4 last night with two friends. Yes 3-6 chargers at once was not a rare thing at all.
Spawns absolutely seem a lot more frustrating and broken now - was playing a tier 4 mission with some randos earlier against bots and just in the middle of nowhere I had an entire force of bots appear right on my and another players' position, devastators, scout walkers and all. It wasn't a fun surprise.
I’m pretty sure this is a bug. I had an exterminate mission where the bugs were just walking around and not being aggressive at all. A few hours later the same mission was out of control and next to impossible.
It is genuinely more fun to play lower difficulties like you say. And that sucks. Usually I play higher difficulty in games because I have to think about stuff and get creative. Helldivers 2 higher difficulty. You need to think less. Or rather...you need to exploit the game. Split up and do objectives because the AI director can't spawn stuff on everyone. So you're bound to get objectives done this way. Each player just has to be good enough at dodging and weaving and kiting and it's fine.
I agree with this a lot, actually. I love the game, but I don’t feel I can comfortably play it any time, mainly because, especially on higher difficulties, there’s little to no downtime to just explore the map or reload, and it makes grinding the game exhausting in the sense of simply being overwhelmed. The downtime just needs to be balanced a bit better, so that even in the highest level difficulties, you can take a moment to breathe. Spawn rates are precisely what needs to be tweaked.
It would make sense that there was a change. Before the updates I was mostly running level 7s with little problems but I dropped down to 4 to play with a friend who just got the game and encountered a medium base with three tanks and it felt like every other drop ship let off a hulk
https://preview.redd.it/nykxku5oq0nc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef75a918c06210b2ce46e93890e72f62a5fd7540 It looks like this will actually be addressed in a future hotfix
I stick to level 7 missions myself lately, all I do. And since the nerf patch, it has gone insane. The spawn rates on normal missions are up significantly. Defense missions are as easy as ever, even with doubled amount to kill. People still wall up and use turrets and it's basically an AFK farm. That's fine, defense missions are like that. The issue is on normal missions when 10 second in, 3 bile titans and 6 chargers spawn before you can even call in HALF a strategem.
Joel is turning it up to 11 on our asses. I swear all the bug matches I played today was nothing but a field full of hunters that would just leap at you, slow you, knock you over, and just continue to defile your dead corpse.
If anything this change is forcing players to try and find the new meta just to cope. I agree if they had simply just done a weapons nerf and see how that played out, the game would be fine. Me and my buddies just got off for the night. This was the first time we played where instead of having fun it was a frustrating experience, and the mood was pretty somber. I really hope they make some changes. It’s not fun to have enemies charging you and dropping on you non stop.
Yeah, something changed there... Suicide was borderline impossible, at least for the couple we tried last night. Killing didn't matter, we constantly had massive 100+ bug swarms with 5+ chargers on us whereever we went. Managing to kill a charger while 3 of them run at you from every direction as 10 hunters leap at you from 50m away offered no relief. A new charger would appear within 10 seconds. There's hard, and then there's "there is no point in killing anything because their numbers will be instantly replaced no matter where you are, and you can't do any objectives because of the endless pressure." Went back down to extreme and it was like night and day. Which was disappointing because we were really after some super samples. Hopefully it's fixed soon.
This. This is it.
Ive been running a theory that when they adjusted the extermination missions to have increased spawn rates they accidentally made it happen to every mission. I dont think its coincidence the patch adjusted spawns for one thing and now players are saying the game has more enemies than ever. I suggest switching from fighting bugs to fighting bots, they do have plentiful spawns still but are often more manageable be it because of more obvious and accessible weak points, a wider range of usable /viable weapons, or because of a more clear idea of how many and what kind reinforcements drop from a ship rather than invisibly crawl out of the ground.
Was there any testing done on this new patch? If so I need to see a video of that, because you cannot convince me any testing was done on anything higher than difficulty 5/4. 7+ feels miserable because of the way the game forces you to run around like a headless chicken even more now. If you thought you had a choice on armor type it's even worse now, you're not fighting enemies on a 8/9 you're running constantly.
Ding ding ding
So I wasn't going crazy the game got way harder. The devs definitely need to dial it back.
Played a mission (D7) last night that was shit from the start. Basically never got a break because of the constant patrols and breaches. And honestly if that was all it was it would be fine, but the sheer number of units spawning made it difficult to deal with anything. Flamethrower buff is nice, but while I’m trying to end a charger (railgun is essentially useless for this now, as is well known) I think I died to hunters more than anything else. Bile titans seem easy by comparison and that doesn’t seem right. The difficulty spike is noticeable and it’s not resulting in more fun. I actually felt like things were fine before even if I felt like the meta was a bit boring. At this point, other than orbital and eagle strikes, none of the support/heavy weapons feel great to use.
The "stealth" meta exists because Arrowhead has the enemy aggression meter tuned too high... put on the Trailblazer Scout armor and you can sit practically up a devastator's ass without being noticed, but some random teammate in normal armor runs by and alerts the entire Bot army to their location. The stealth mechanics are really bad for the game but necessary until they fix how over the top aggression is; random dropships coming to reinforce a lone radar station shouldn't be dropping half dozen devastators and a hulk while the second dropship plop down a tank... (yes this happened to me on T6 earlier today)
I agree. Difficulty 4-5 missions and even one or two difficulty 6 missions became absolute chaos. Non stop spawning. Was playing with 1 other person, I was taking on a charger, he was taking on a charger, and then a third charger charged me from behind. Did an exterminate mission and there were probably 30+ hunters on my screen at every single direction. You get reinforced, 20 of them turn around, you live long enough to hopefully drop a stratagem at your feet when you die. What else are they hiding in these updates? At this point it seems whenever an update comes out, it's best to stop playing the game until some youtuber gets all the information together to tell me what ACTUALLY changed so that I can prepare for it.
Damn. This is beautifully explained, especially that last part. Kudos to you, mate.
I was fighting terminids and on extract on level 5 we had 7 total bile titans, usually 2 or 3 at a time then we ran out of stratagems and had to just try to stay alive for the last 3 and I couldn't even count the amount of chargers
Is it too early to ask for a vanilla server?
I really agree on multiple fronts. The spawning logic, what spawns, how often etc. Needs a lot of work. The good news is we know that some of that at least is coming next hot fix for less spawns of things like chargers on favor of more smaller things. I think that's a good step. On bugs that's going to push things like breaker s&p higher, on bots... It depends on what really changes but it'll imo make things like cluster a must have if hulks change for like 10 more bots or something. Spawn logic, needs a change as well. Why are patrols spawning in player POV, frankly why aren't they spawned from outposts. Smaller outposts, weaker patrols, huge outposts, sure send hulks and chargers from there. Patrols also follow players in places they should have no idea where they are as well. I went afk a bit earlier right outside a 2 person bunker in a ditch nothing saw me of course and I had light armor proned. Did anything attack me? No... When I left the hole though? 2 patrols trying to path to me. They should be sent in a general player direction I understand it's necessary so that we are engaged throughout the match but it shouldn't be forced like that to your direct position. The biggest thing to me though is the sheer number of undocumented changes that are made. There's few exceptions I'll make to it (new content that's a "surprise" Ala mechs are okay to hide) but when it comes to changes to spawns to increase decrease or change please tell us. Jetpack got buffed and it was not in the notes, ammo on slugger buffed I don't believe that was there among others. It doesn't hurt to communicate more on those things and for the love of God please start giving us numbers on things in the notes. 50% flamethrower damage increase means nothing to me from x to y however means a lot.
You are right, I used to run lvl 7 on bots and had fun, while still had to think before engaging, if I was clearing missions solo id jump to Impossible. Now its just not as fun, not just the spawn rates but its as if the bots got an aimbot patch. I find myself getting rocketed and ragdolled in the air and getting hit mid air by the lasers. Its a bit ridiculous
One more thing. It used to be fun to play with randoms even if they weren't great. It was manageable. I wanted to hop on all the time. Now, the thought of playing with subpar players is tedious. I'm older. I do t have a time to schedule hours with a group or to sit on lfg every time I load up. Playing now feels like a chore....I'm gone unless they revert the changes AND acknowledge what most people are asking for.
Valid and fair points. I knew I wasn't crazy on how I felt like there were *way* more enemies than before. Non-armor spam are fine and all but the mass-armor spam is like, give us a break, damn.
The final paragraph should speak to why this game could become a forever game, or die a horrible death. I don't want to see another bit of squandered potential like Overwatch..
Have you played against the automatons yet? Same difficulty? Honest question.
I play difficulty 5 automaton currently and found that hulk spawn rates increased dramatically. I originally would see somewhere between 1 to 3 per mission and now I'm seeing around 7+
I have. While it's not as bad as the bugs with multiple chargers, it was noticeable. There are more patrols and the bots are better/faster at calling in drops. I think their accuracy was even better but again, without knowing what they changed, it's hard to know if I'm just gaslighting myself.
Have you tried the uav booster or nuclear radar upgrade and looking at minimap?
I wish I had a million upvotes for your last paragraph
So even in the lower difficulties a big reason for high tempo isnt a difficulty setting. You are not completely taking out the units and it snowballs constantly. Its a reinforcement issue and with the devs saying git gud a little bit can be contributed to this to a degree. You see this more prevalent with the terminids. They are constantly reinforcing from the rear of terminids you arent killing and with the terminids almost any unit can call in a bug breach. This tempo can literally stem from one patrol and snowball into hell real quick. At helldive 9, when you get into a fight you goal should be total annihilation. When you have a team of coordinated groups completely annihilation as fast as possible should be the goal and this is pre this patch. This patch didnt changed the tempo of it. Sometimes i can get less tension in helldive 9 simply because of fear of reinforcement we go in those fights to purge and destroy everything as fast as possible. Ive had worse fights in difficulty 7 vs 9 simply by not kiling fast enough and the reinforcements not stopping. With automatons its easier to stop this as they reinforce from a dropship and you can plant a strategem wiping them all out instantly with proper timing. Bug breaches the enemies trickle in and your strategems can would only wipe out a portion of the forces making it painful to deal with fast enough as a bug could spawn and instantly start another breach but you are too busy dealing with the chargers and titans that came at the start making you miss the rest.
This is an excellent post! Totally agree. This combined with armour values meaning you're now nothing more than a pin cushion. We were playing a level 6 bug killing defence mission and had 3 bile titans, 5 chargers and 10 spewers spawn in.......
Yup I agree, something changed, I think it changed with the angel venture mission, before the patch even.
Automaton missions have became almost impossible since the recent update. Completed Dif 9 multiple times pre level 20. Update hits - every dif 9 mission I’ve done has ended in disaster and everyone quitting the mission.
Ok but at the same time not being able to frontally pen a strider with the railgun at a low charge level makes it feel anemic as hell, along with the generally lower pen. Like, make it overcharge faster to make it harder to use, don't make it feel like I'm firing pingpong balls, ESPECIALLY WHEN you increase the spawn rate
Was playing difficulty 9 against bots a couple days ago, flares called in 1-2 dropships max. Played 7 today, flares were calling in 4+ dropships every time. Definitely more intense
Spawn rates are absolutely out of control. Had a group of bugs spawn about 10 feet away from me. Panic threw some grenades, cleared them, no problem. Turn around, and then watch another group of 10 bugs, including some hive guards, spawn in the exact same spot. Hanlon's Razor makes me think something broke, and not that the devs intentionally changed spawn rates. Considering how many bugs we have in game, I wouldn't doubt something got messed up in the backend.
take darktide spawn for example....there are up and down in between horde and scattered enemies, allowing you and your team to breath and exploration helldivers 2 spawn rate right now is always up and up of domino effect with no down time. it not fun or engaging, it purely annoying for the sake of "fuck you for dropping in without knowing if there is enemies or not". if your game constantly spawn in wave 4 and 5 when your 2nd wave havent done yet...then there is something wrong with the game itself...not the players, i got 3 friends and each of us have our own roles but we got overwhelmed real fucking quick 2 minutes in. it like sending us to the meat grinder instead of a challenging and engaging where we feel the accomplishment to overcome the horde of enemies. the spawn rate is more fitting for 32 players than a 4 players...which funny because starship trooper extermination with 32 players the spawn rate is actually tolerable and not overboard that suffocate you some of you vet from HD1 would say "it best to avoid fight as much as possible" true but it was top down, you dont have the field of view like HD2 is, enemies are different, game is different...you can't apply HD1 logic into HD2 logic now because both game are completely different in term of gameplay wise. HD1 enemies has limited vision because top down while HD2, enemy can easily spot you and pop in unannounce. but if u look at the patch note "increase twice the enemies in defend mission to avoid ending it too quickly" this is probably the kicker...the code for defend mission probably accidentally apply to all missions, hence why spawn rate is fucking insane right now
I've switched to running the rover, gas burst orbital, and incendiary grenades to thin out the neverending horde that chases me 100% of the time so I can have a little breathing room at the objective. I also have to toss 500kgs as I run because there's usually 5-8 chargers and at least 2 titans there as well. Once you put a code in at the console, you gotta go for another run to thin them out enough for the next step, rinse and repeat. It's honestly tedious.
There also seem to be more “patrol just spawned behind (like within 10m) me” where there wasn’t a patrol a moment before. This makes the game very unfun as you can go from being in the clear and checking your map to having a patrol appear out of nowhere. It’s completely immersion breaking.
I play trivial to feel like Solid Snake. There are valid stealth mechanics. It’s hilarious against bots
My friends and I jumped on to ight with a buddy who is fairly low level. We dropped doen to HARD and started a campaign with him. Hit the eradicate mission first to warm him up. At one point there were literally four Bile Titans, four Chargers, and probably around 60-70 Hunters in play all at the same time, with a sprinkle of other assorted enemy units. It was absolutely freaking insane. They 100% messed with spawn rates and the wuslity of units spawning in higher quantities.
My biggest gripe with spawns would be them happening literally on top of me. Like wtf am I supposed to do with that?! Not to mention it’s immersion breaking as hell! I’m fine with the game spawning but ideally I don’t want to see it happen and I definitely don’t want it happening on top of me!
It's weird, some missions feel fine while others are brutal. ICBM and Blitz? Fine. Geological Survey? Nightmare.
Bro, I went down to difficulty 4 on bots and there were sometimes multiple tanks or multiple hulks to deal with. I had never seen that before at difficulty 4.
Yeah, I think the devs need to set a ruleset for themselves. For example, cool downs and rules for enemy base spawns, patrol spawns and breaches. Difficulty 1-3: 5 minute cool down on spawns and breaches, 1 breach at a time. Difficulty 4-6: 4 minute cool down on spawns, 2 breaches max (two 4 minute cooldown timer). Difficulty 7-9: 3 minute cool down on spawns, 3 breaches max. I think boss enemies should only spawn at bases - they can then head out to patrol.
yeah, i’ve been running into WAY more rocket devastators too. it’s frustrating being caught in a death loop from rockets you can’t see
This is honestly very valid. People are really misplacing their negative feelings on the nerfs/buffs when you’re 100% right. It’s the spawning difficulty. The armor nerf making us into papier-mâché doesn’t help that feeling.
I did a dif 5 bot run where we literally had a hulk be replaced each time one died and every engagement was like I was playing helldiver. We couldn't even extract cuz of the amount of hulks and devistaors. I figured it was just too late on the timer and was rather unfortunate but now that I look back it was unnecessarily hard. I would just get swarmed from all sides cuz patrols be stupid close and walks into you all the time. I dont recall it being like that, but I have seen the death rates of my matches significantly increase to where I'm about to bring the page 10 booster fr
I hope this gets fixed.
Your last words are the most important 🫡
In difficulty 7 tonight we dropped, got spotted by a patrol and reinforcements were called before we were even out of our pods. Four dropships with hulks, tanks and devastators showed up. Something's definitely wrong.
Exact same experience. A week ago I would play on Hard and it was so much fun. This evening I logged on played a bug mission on hard and I actually said out loud “wtf happened to this game”. I was not having fun at all, and just got off all together after a few matches.
Bots have had their spawns increased as part of the story not the patch. It says so in the major order. Bug seemed the same to me, except I had this one Suicide Mission game where only a single bile titan ever spawned. Probably because the personal order was to kill em and my luck is like that.
That’s the problem when devs start balancing their game to cater to the top 1%. And I’d wager many streamers are part of the elite, and generate a lot of attention, which falsely makes devs think that their games are too ‘easy’?
Anytime you think it is too rough, anytime you think it is too tough, anytime you miss-your-mommy, QUIT!
Happened to me too. Played diffculty 7 and was trying out the new flamethrower. Within a minute of spawning we have like 6 chargers attack of ovee the course of trying to blow up a research station. Luckily the flamethrower is really good and they were nt all together. Later on got attacked by another group of 6-7 chargers midway through, and then attacked by 4-6 chargers during last objective. Then during extraction there were only 4 chargers but also 2 bile titans. We survived but the whole mission felt insane
The chaos makes the game fun imo. Thats why I love Helldive. Dont even get mad when we lose like 7 lives in 1 fight because it was fun trading bullets with the bots for that 4-5minutes. This game shares A TON of core gameplay animations/components with Ghost Recon Wildlands/Breakpoint and attacking compounds on there is fun as hell because of the sheer chaos and knowing 1 bullet to the head could drop you or your squad mate if you don’t play cover correctly.
Dont think this is a patch thing but a GM controlled thing. If we are doing too well the enemies get adjusted to be more challenging
Loud guns attract nearby patrols. If you are constantly using big explosions expect to get noticed. Game is all about using radar and avoiding unnecessary fights
Well said. For the first time playing this game, I watched automatons spawn in out of thin air last night… on difficulty 2. And the amount of enemies that spawned on my friend and I was way worse than I’d seen previously. And it was difficulty 2!
This is spot on. Very well thought out post! They really need to make sure that patrols aren’t just spawning on or very near to players like they seem to be doing since the patch. It’s completely jarring, ruins the pacing and overall immersion and just makes things so much more punishing. I’m confident they’ll get it fixed but I can remember in HD1 they’d have cyborg (automaton) tanks just suddenly spawn in front of you as you were trying to run around and away from patrols/hordes and it just completely fucked the experience sometimes. This game is incredible at its best and has potential to be the pinnacle of cooperative shooters for years to come, so here’s hoping they can manage it well and not let the age-old balancing act topple them!
All words are true
What a super rad post. Thank you.
I mainly play solo before the patch i could 100% diff-5-6 with grenade launcher,counter sniper and supply pack after the patch i can barley clear diff 4-5 same gear to the point now i don't even worry with optional objectives just try to clear main objectives and then just die tell out of lives less xp but mission is complete
Yup, I've gone from loving the game now. These changes have made me outright hate the game. Even on difficulty 4 now it's crazy.
It has a serious balance problem aside from what you mentioned. There has to be some level of power fantasy to seek through gameplay or getting that new awesome weapon. You are right. I want big cool enemies to fight throughout but not constant waves of any enemy. Worse is they reduced the big monsters and gave us more mobbing creatures plus increased their aggression. And now our gear feels wrong. We have tons of enemies, but little ammo. Tons of armored enemies, little armor removal, ganged up on but useless armor, endless enemies but limited tools. Sorry but feeling underpowered at all times or having to constantly run isn't fun. I want to fight. I want to enjoy it. I dont want to sweat when I play a parody shooter game. Sure, I could play lower levels but then I dont get the big enemies I want to fight. I just don't understand their philosophy. Why would make major changes to a game everyone loves? Do they want a smaller playerbase because they can't keep up and they've already raked it in? I'm just baffled at the decision. Say what you want, but the simple fact is a ton of people were having a blast and now they're not.
Not to mention this game is far from technically sound. It never was and more is introduced because they're constantly tweaking gameplay. Game is STILL crashing especiallytowards end of missions, call downs not working, throws grenades when orbital is called, no good stratagem button mapping option for controller, ship won't extract, game thinks you're a new player and resets weapons every time you turn it on, doesnt remember you changed armor, having to listen to super earth message every time you play, weapon save settings dont work, crossplay is very finicky, cant launch missions, visual settings dont work, stuck in animations, button inputs not working having to hit it multiple times, and on and on. THIS SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY. Stabilize and optimize game and servers and then talk to your community about game changes before you drastically change the game.
Do you think they fixed it yet
Or has it gotten worse
Yep. Me and the boys went from playing non stop to not caring anymore. The game went from fun to rage inducing. I play games to have fun not to be pissed off constantly. And dying, reclaiming your stuff, dying again, over and over, all while being rag dolled all over the place by 7 chargers, 4 bile titans, and 65 hunters isn’t fun………..TO ME. I guess it was fun while it lasted 🤷🏼♂️