Severs have been pretty bad but any time I get to complete a mission, I've loved it.
I feel the move from isometric to full 3D actually does wonders for the gameplay; the original was a bit too slow and stealth focused when played solo for my taste, while this one gives you a much greater field of view to spot enemy patrols, and marksman weapons are a lot more valuable with the new aiming mechanics and aforementioned view distance.
Not to mention the sheer difference in combat between the Automatons and the Terminids! Terminid maps can go from 0 to 100 real fast, but Automaton maps, you're always on edge, looking out for the next bot-drop and the next wave of HEAVILY ARMORED enemies of Democracy! Both difficult, and FUN, in their own frantic, tyrannical, SOCIALIST ways!
The game's basically Deep Rock Galactic mixed with Starship Troopers, and it's damn great.
Only complaint is that it's a bit buggy, but nothing game-breaking; I can't seem to link my Steam account to the Playstation store for some reason. Doesn't even seem like Sony added in an option to link via their main website account menu either. No big loss, at least so far - everyone I tend to play with uses a PC to game anyways.
SS 13 player
it hasn't even been a week and the Helldivers 2 servers are already struggling with the immense popularity of the game.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The greatest enemy of Managed Democracy are the servers. Clearly this is deliberate sabotage by the Automaton scourge.
They are leaning very into the Starship Troopers vibes lol.
PC Gamer seems to enjoy all of the chaotic friendly fire incidents this game encourages. And I've seem some folks acting as sacrificial pawns by deliberately throwing airstrike beacons at their feet when cornered; works pretty well against the bugs, less so against the bots since they tend to keep their distance more often.
Edited by SgtRicko on Feb 13th 2024 at 10:25:49 PM
The friendly fire definitely has lead to plenty of hilarious moments.
And it really fits the tone.
A crucial part from the video is about the unlock system. Basically, you use medals to unlock items in a progression tree of sorts called "Warbonds", but it has a non-premium and premium version. The free version will naturally unlock as you progress and use medals to obtain new items, with later items in the progression costing more medals - i.e, the first few guns and armors just cost around 5-12 medals, but the later stuff will cost up to 40 medals or more.
The premium Steeled Bonds are a bit trickier though: you'll need 1000 premium credits to just to unlock it. Granted, you can earn premium currency through normal gameplay, but it's at a very slow pace, and you'll still need medals to unlock anything. Add in how it's likely a timed premium tree, and, well... I can see some players becoming potentially upset if they realize their premium currency went to waste if they didn't reach the end of the progression tree in time. Not very consumer-friendly, that.
It's been confirmed that all Warbonds are permanent, thankfully.
Should there be a Helldivers 2 tropes page?
The Head of the Hydra
Someone's really gotta make one.
There is so much stuff the sequel adds.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Never Ask Me For Anything Ever Again
Preferably, someone who played the first game should do it, since most of the playerbase for 2 is new to the series.
"Shout, shout, let it all out These are the things I can do without, come on I'm talking to you, come on!" -Tears For Fears
I don't have too much experience starting pages but I can fact check a page for the sequel since I crammed some time into the first to prepare for it.
I agree with the others on needing a separate page for the game.
In other news...
Helldivers 2 has now surpassed 300,000 concurrent players on Steam
The metagame for Helldivers 2 is becoming more apparent, and it seems to be leaning towards builds capable of moving+shooting while also penetrating heavy armor. Which means mostly the railgun, portable auto-cannon, or anti-material rifle as the heavy weapon picks. Unfortunately the other weapons end up becoming useless either due to being too gimmicky (the Flamethrower or Arc Cannon), too sluggish to use (the heavy machinegun or recoilless rifle) or just not dealing with armor efficiently enough (the deployable drones, the grenade launcher, the double-barrel shotgun... hell, most of the primary weapons, for that matter). Even dumber is how the one primary rifle in the game advertised as being an anti-armor weapon (AR-23P Liberator Penetrator) apparently doesn't work; the community has noticed it doesn't seem to perform any better versus the baseline version.
Feels like the developers need to make the primary weapons just a tad more capable of piercing heavily armored enemies, at the very least.
That all makes sense. Though many of the armored enemies do have weak points that can be taken advantage of with good aim or flanking that don't need the heavier weapons to take advantage of.
Admittedly, I haven't played all that much and most of my experience is against cyborgs.
Edited by Zeromaeus on Feb 19th 2024 at 4:35:47 AM
Yeah, you can’t just blaze away and expect to mow down the bigger enemies like you do the smaller grunts. I’ve seen gameplay of people blazing away at walkers with LM Gs and most of the shots just bounce off the armor.
The Head of the Hydra
The scale of this game is incredible especially compared to the smaller scale of the first game. Arrowhead must be commended for the years of work they put into, its clearly made with a lot of love and care.
I can only imagine the new stuff they'll put in for the future now that its a huge success.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Yeah, I admittedly feel like we're playing the Early Access period since a big release under Sony was never going to actually have an Early Access period so I'm forgiving on the balance issues (which were honestly present in the first).
So yeah, seriously looking forward to what's in the works in the future, especially with the massive interest in it meaning they're going to be far more ambitious than the first game.
Arrowhead's CEO has said that their server overload problems stem from their backend code hitting its limits and needing to be changed. Therefore, they need programmers to re-code it.
Steam description.
The game was released days ago, but it's been getting very positive reception online.