this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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Helldivers 2

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Replying to a player on Twitter who said recent patches have made the game "unplayable," Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt conceded that he's not satisfied with his studio's current balancing approach.

"Hey, yeah I think we've gone too far in some areas. Will talk to the team about the approach to balance," he wrote. "It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed."

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I don't get it.

There is no need for balance in PVE.

Just make every primary viable to use (within a reasonable level by boosting them all), then balance the enemies off that and add new enemies and guns.

As long as you don't get severely punished for not using meta weapons, then why does it matter? Not everything has to be perfectly balanced, especially a non-competetive game...

[–] StitchIsABitch 21 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I fucking hate the "meta" era of online gaming we are in. Everything has to be meta. "You shouldn't use that gun, it deals 0.3 DMG less than the others", "that armor is bad since patch 27383727 3 minutes ago", "how dare you play this champion that has a 2% lower win-rate".

Fuck off, meta is something that became relevant for pro gaming. I don't give a shit about the meta, this is bronze, it literally doesn't matter at the skill level 99% of players are at. People just want to have something to blame when they lose: "of course you won, that weapon is OP/imba/busted".

And it's making its way into pve/coop too now. Every time I launch a new online game I have to learn what people want me to play so that I don't get yelled at. How about you just let me play? So what if my build is not optimal?

I think gaming has made amazing strides, but along the way some people forgot that the main goal is to have fun.

[–] AngryCommieKender 3 points 6 months ago

MWO and EvE have entered the chat

[–] bouh 9 points 6 months ago

You are describing balance, actually. If all weapons are viable and you're not punished for using one instead of another, it means that they each have their niche or they're balanced well. And the balancing target is the enemy.

It's easier to balance in a pve game because the AI behave predictably and have known stats. Tweaking AI and enemies is a good tool for pve balance, but only as it can allow some mechanics to be viable. Tweaking enemies will do nothing to balance weapons between themselves.

There is another balancing bullet too : making the game so easy that the relative power of weapons between themselves doesn't matter. But it cannot work with HD2 because the game is supposed to be hard.