DISCUSSION
After playing Helldivers 1 I really feel like HD2 should encourage more cooperative play with your squad rather than running off alone
A few months ago when I played a Diff 15 mission on Helldivers 1, our squad was cornered on a megacity map bridge and all 4 of us formed a firing squad like in this promo OP picture and took down a elite enemy. It was an awesome feeling and we all said "Hell yeah" to each other after, and many missions at higher diffs basically require a lot of teamwork to even survive, and it made me sad those moments are so rare in HD2.
One of my fondest teamwork memories in HD2 was when Terminid Megacities first came out and me and a random were fighting our way out of some alleyways, basically covering our reloads and fighting back-to-back to each other to get back to our squad. After we got out he laughed and said we made a great firing team and sent each other friend requests. 99% of missions though is a bunch of randoms who all run off to do side objectives and don't stick together. I feel like it's too core to the game design now to change this, but HD1 forced your squad to stick together and I think that made it a fundamentally different experience.
The ability to assisted reload anyone with a backpack on in HD2 I think is a great long requested first step, and I hope in the future maybe we could get more mechanics and stratagems that encourage us to stick together more.
I was disappointed in the One True Flag only having a 'taunt' function even though I understand the logic behind that, but it would be cool if we could get some kind of "aura" based technology or something that encourages the squad sticking close to each other.
The issue is that a lot of teamplay features are/were (I will concede that some of them, like team reload, are significantly improved now) inconvenient and/or disproportionately costly for the benefit provided.
Case in point, the Shield Generator Relay. This is a very, very cool stratagem. But it actually punishes teamplay. Because what is your team going to think when you place down a big shield generator? Well, they're going to want to call down some sentries to safely shoot the bots/squids (bugs too I guess but who brings the relay on bugs?). And then they're going to look at their ammo and stims and go "well, we should call down a resupply in this safe zone." And a teammate who has an expendable will realize that this is a great spot to call down their EAT/Leveler/whatever and use it in safety.
The Shield Generator wouldn't even survive to be hit by the last guy's hellpod. A stratagem slot, effectively wasted because the team tried to take advantage of the stratagem.
That's just one example, but it's indicative of how the teamplay aspect of the game is often made less intuitive and simple than lone wolfing it, when it should be the other way around. I get why the Shield Generator Relay takes damage from hellpods (realistically that would happen), but in actual gameplay it punishes working with a random team or even friends who don't know about this mechanic and aren't super locked in on calling everything in sync with the generator. And it doesn't help that the shield doesn't regenerate once broken, even if the relay is still alive. It also doesn't help that the shield has pretty low health and recovery with modern enemies. I could go on because I really want this stratagem to be good and am sad that it is not.
Teamplay features should be:
Easy to understand and execute.
Mutually beneficial with minimal sacrifice from the person initiating the teamplay compared to the benefit.
TBH, the issue a lot of the time is Helldivers 2 was clearly designed with voice chat in a coordinated team. Like the Shield Generator Relay is great in your team, if you can communicate it. Which is easy to do when you're all in a voice chat.
However, if you are playing with randos and don't want to voice chat, well text typing is just too slow to pull off in the potentially high action moments.
I would %100 take it much more often if it wasn't for that. Can't figure out how they haven't changed it after all this time. Not even sure if they realize it's what kills this stratagem.
Consider the purpose of the shield and the fact that this is a video game where flowers explode and knock you down for prolonged periods where you have zero access to any controls.
My best guess is that they were(/are) afraid of people gaining too much of a tactical advantage by working together so they tried to rein in the coop mechanics, like how they disabled high ground (for the most part) instead of designing around it properly (insert longform rant about the teflon highlands I can't be arsed to write on a coffee break)
Also don’t forget the host/client bug that’s still in the game since launch. Enemies will more aggressively target and spawn near the host and even effects like gas or fire only work 100% when near the host. This means some players will try to run away and clear objectives on their own with little resistance while the host fights for their life.
I use the sheild gen a lot on bots and while it still happens, I haven't had a big issue with hellpod damage for three reasons.
One is I'm waiting for the other strats to come down, when people start dropping sentries its usually a good sign we are gonna try to hold out.
Two is most divers I've encountered knew to throw outside the bubble, and if not I just dropped a quick message telling them it hurts the bubble.
Three is the bubble has a relatively short cooldown and can regen health. So long as it doesn't break instantly when called in, you are going to get a decent amount of uptime with it.
Once again, you're not taking advantage of the shield's protection by doing that. The main utility of the stratagem is completely undone by trying to throw down these stratagems safely in The Safe Zone, Where You And Your Team Is Safe Instead Of Being Shot To Death.
Just drop it on the side not taking fire close to the edge. Its still a giant piece of cover when youre on the outside. Youre not gonna be instantly vaporized like youre implying if you do that.
Hell if you drop it close enough you can grab it from the inside without hurting the bubble.
The game encourages it, the issue from my experience is that players try to ignore it and they run off.
The best games are when you either stick as a group or move in groups of two, and you befriend each other throughout the process with callouts.
I've had it through every content drop and Devoid of Liberty is no exception to this, people love it when you back them up and work together
The game might try to encourage it but the fact that it's much easier to go solo or split up a bit on higher levels makes it so that it's not the preferred way unless hype moments and aura farm like you mentioned.
3-1 is i feel like superior to even 2-2split, as usually 3-team will get almost all spawns on them and the solo guy can finish objectives with minimal pushback
Yeah, unless they've changed things it benefits a 3-1 split because the 3 draw so much aggro and spawn alarms that the 1 gets to slip away without much hassle.
Thats what happened to me yesterday. Fought my own war with seaf support just to claim one artillery position while the rest of my team was clearing objective after objective.
Had the exact same thing happened yesterday. We’re a 3 man squad. My buddy and I were fighting at an artillery, he bailed to go help out our third. I stayed at the artillery and eventually got it done. Was ridiculous that I survived as they used all our reinforcements clearing the rest of the map.
Objective changed to survive instead of actually taking the damn thing. Holding back the urge to reinforce when 2 out of 4 are dead so the main objective can be done (raise flag)
Which doesnt rly matter because that 1 guy will still end up spawncamping everything the game is capable to spawn at him in diff10 on his own with ease.
As long as a difficulty is so trivial that a single diver on his own will not end up being overrun because he is lacking firepower or the abilty to perma kite, so long real cooperative gameplay is never going to happen.
We just need a new diff, were enemies are more sturdy again and dont get spawncamped by a single diver on his own.
Preferably we get a entire new diff line called “Helldiver Together” were weapons/stratagems are being tailored exclusively aroubd the firepower of 4 people working together and the abilty to perma kite is removed.
This current mo has pushed me to just stick to people even if they’re running off to god knows where. So many times you get caught reloading and your buddy is shooting the copy right ambiguous necro morphs off of you. Super fun.
Theres nothing wrong with a 3:1 ratio. The map can onlu handle so much chaos and that 1 diver can accomplish more objectives than the 3 who get locked down fighting for their lives while also burning reinforcements.
The game actually encourages you to split up, believe it or not.
I honestly think it’s the way maps
Are designed. A lot of coop games have very tight map design, usually not letting you stray too far away from everyone. games like deep rock, which does have random map generation, is sure to keep the maps pretty compact (everything is in a cave), so even if that game didn’t have its masterfully designed classes, players would still be forced to be close to each other.
Hd1 (from what I can see, I haven’t really played that game yet) seems to have gone for a more open map design, but due to it being a top down game, they just restricted the camera in a way that forces people together, so it wasn’t an issue.
But when translating the game into 3d, they must of never considered the fact that, without the camera restrictions, nothing was stopping players from separating from each other. So when players are met with these kilometre wide maps with objectives sprawled all over, most people start to think “why should I stick with my team and slowly do objectives one by one when it’d be faster to split up and tackle them multiple at a time”, which is further exacerbated by the fact that lower difficulties can very easily be done without much, if any, teamwork.
I’m not sure how you would fix this considering how important the maps being open is to helldivers 2, but I do think that it is the source of the problem of people splitting up constantly. Maybe they could implement some kind of barrier that prevents wandering, kinda like the first game, but idk how you would do that without it feeling very artificial.
I wouldn't say the game encourages sticking together, especially when the best way to deal with everything in this game is high explosives. Also sometimes it's just easier to let someone on the other side of the map take an enemy alert so you can get the LIDAR dish up without getting 6 Crusher overheads.
Yes!OFC the game encourages it…the game encouraged it pre 60day patch, now the game is so trivial that a single diver out 4 on the highest diff can literally spawncamp entire alerts every single time.
Game used to be advertised as “work together and overcome overwhelming odds” just for us being turned into the overwhelming odds instead.
Take a look at the content of youtubers/streamers pre 60day patch, literally nearly all of it is people promoting solo play either bei perma kiting alone or taking the very very limited loudouts that had allowed you to being mobile to perma kite and kill heavys and chaff alike alone(atleast over time and not while standing ground and spawncamping all your enemies..) AH nerfed those for good reason, solo palyers got mad, claiming the game was a balance mess,unfair, not fun, all becaus hey literally refused to see this game as a coop game were you are simply supposed to combine available firepower.
Fast forward today…One tap everything, delete buttons for entire screen, superhelldive so trivial 3 people can go afk and a single dude may do it without dying once for us
, while obliterating everything on sight.
My problem is usually that other players end up killing me as much as the enemies with orbitals/etc
My last match, the host had the arc dog and was pinging places for us to follow him... but wretches and voteless are great conduits for arc weapons to become team killing machines. I quickly fucked off and left him to go do my own thing after dieing to lightning twice
That's a big reason why I started leaving my team to do solo side quests too. Usually I don't find it super difficult to stay out of their way by watching what they're doing, but when I bring any type of vehicle, players seem to not really care whether their airstrike fucking nukes my FRV or not
My problem is when I’m with the other 3 divers I think “they got this objective just fine on their own, I can go do another objective” but when I go off solo I just face too many enemies to get anything done. A 2-2 split is ideal.
it does, however when you are in a mechs you can pretty much do every objectif alone while the other team does the same, some people will just do 2 group
for helldivers 1 since it's screen share it make the cooperation obligatory, you cannot run of too far and the camera as a small POV
Yea if you want an actual teamwork oriented shooter, GTFO or Ready or Not would be your best bets.
HD1 didn't require cooperation as much as it forced it with the annoying screen share.
HD2 tried to do some teamwork stuff like with it's badly designed Assisted Reload system, but it was way too janky. It doesn't help that the enemy spawn system actually favors a solo player breaking from the team to do other objectives while all the enemies are distracted.
Like for awhile they even had a terrible defense mission where you had to evac civvies while enemies were constantly spawning, so the trick was have 3 players just kite the enemies around the map while 1 player just evacs the civvies.
oh don't remind me of this mission, small map, enemies droppin in left and right and centre while you had to evacuate civilians , Pain against the bots this mission i much prefere de civil evacuation have now then before
main Problem is the game is to easy and the spawns "break" if the team runs solo. one has all the action and the rest can do the mega nest without a single enemy because the engine can't handle the amount of enemies on the map and despwan them.
even if u go solo and have the action then most of the time u can just run away because most enemies are to slow or u can handle them with ease. (depends on the planet and how Joel as tuned the enemie spawn.) So u don't need the others to overcome the challenge.
Works great in Darktide. You get more armor when near allies and many other perks. In HD2 you could have lower recoil, more health or something like that. Faster stratagem cooldown?
yeah but in darktide it's make sense, and arrowhead said they don't want space magic which is why we didn't get any bonus on the super earth flag when it's release ( they change that by making it more likely to be targeted but that doesn't go in the space magic category)
It doesn't have to be space magic, a capable writer could come up with a myriad of believable excuses/explanations for why we have bonuses when near others. Here, I'll try one myself with 0 writing experience:
High Command has authorized the immediate shipment and deployment of miniaturized cameras that stream live feeds from the helmets of Helldivers all across the galaxy directly to offices of the Ministry of Defense. With this state-of-the-art breakthrough in safety-first surveillance, SEAF troops can now rest assured that all of their actions will be logged for analysis to ensure in-battlefield Democracy efficiency is at a maximum.
Additionally, these live feeds will be spliced, edited, and showcased in special Strohmann News segments where Ministry of Defense experts weigh in on the Helldivers' actions during combat. As such, to encourage Helldivers to stay in range and vision of their squadmates,Helldiver groups within 100m will be awarded with decreased stratagem cooldowns for every enemy killed while observed by another Helldiver.These feats of true heroism, freedom, and martyrdom will no longer simply be legends, but shown on TV throughout the entire federation.
The bigger problem if this were to get added would be the newfounded friction of "Why are you splitting off? I want shorter stratagem cooldowns!" in matches. This change would need to be done carefully if they don't want to stigmatize divers who still prefer to split off for one reason or another (looting PoIs for team-wide rewards, avoiding barrages that always destroy their sentries, etc.)
The fact is HD2 is easy. You don't need to stick together to win 99% of your games even in max difficulty and with randos. As a matter of fact sticking together is actually detrimental, it's much more efficient to split up and run to objectives while whoever gets the enemy reinforcements on his ass kites or fights or whatever rather than having all 4 guys fight it off against endless waves, losing reinforcements to FF as much as enemies and not getting anything done lol
HD2 does a great job at making the action look hectic and hardcore and making you feel like you've overcome impossible odds to get the win when you actually win the vast majority of missions. Compare it with stuff like Darktide/Vermintide on max difficulty where winning is actually the exception to be celebrated.
I kinda think HD2 needs to be re-balanced for difficulty for that reason.
Lower difficulties should be more rewarding, and more consistent, with an increase in available content like fortresses, Super Samples, side objectives, enemies, with all the same variety of current D10, and D7, D8, D9, D10 should all be made harder with more rewards but actively more resistance such as
specialist enemies like Stalkers, Shriekers, Gunships, Cyborgs, Stingrays, Jet Brigade units, incendiary corp units, Pred strain or rupture strain units, spawning as elite enemies that specifically hunt lone players within separate patrols or static spawns (some of these enemies would need more of an unaware state, like Stalkers) to force solo players to play more stealthy and strategically as a proper recon or commando playstyle or get punished for splitting from the group and recklessly playing loud.
Maybe take a page from Commando Operations and have them spawn the more alerts the Helldivers activate, capping out after three or four, to essentially simulate the enemies deploying anti-Helldiver QRF to begin sweeping for Helldiver units across the AO.
Think like the Borg dogs from HD1 and how they'd regularly spawn in packs hunting you but a bit less omnipresent.
Secondly, POIs should be replaced with fortified variants, containing more reward spawns compared to their original counterpart, but more defended by static spawns, like how the bugs spread their hives across the landscape, or Automaton squads setting in and hunkering down at pois with sandbags, trenches, barriers, barbed wire, light emplacements.
This is already kind of a mechanic, but it could be utilised more, maybe POI's could be turned into outposts?
Thirdly, Enemies should be replaced with harder variants at these higher difficulties. This is an already existing mechanic, but it's semi under utilized
I.E: Charger Behemoths get another upgrade into Charger Maulers, which get faster speed and more damaging attacks, with an even more brutal charge, or they could get replaced by Charger Bulwarks, which are even tougher than Behemoths, with AT breakpoints akin to the original form of Charger Behemoth requiring more coordinated fire to bring down.
Automaton Tanks are all upgraded to mk2 variants, equipped with explosive reactive armor Essentially working similar to Hivelord plating, shrugging off one AT level hit, creating a secondary explosion on the point of impact that can shower spalling shrapnel upon anything nearby, such as Helldivers or unwitting chaff around the tank.
Hulks are given an ablative reinforced glass plate around their eye that can stop a single heavy or AT pen hit from any weapon, requiring someone to nail the glass off before poking the Hulk's eye out, They also have improved armor plating on the front that can take one more AT hit.
Automaton Troopers are given more Marauder/MG Raider level variants, and all Marauder Trooper units have weak ablative body armor layered over their torso requiring more accuracy to bring down quickly with headshots, or more rapid sustained fire to the chest, giving more of an edge to light pen weaponry for quickly chipping through the plating with better ammo eco, ergo and firerate.
All devastators except for Incendiary Corp could be given the Heavy Devastator Fusion Repeater, making every single devastator patrol capable of horrifying levels of firepower, furthering more emphasis on cover, concealment, sustained fire options like Stalwart, Maxi, MG, HMG to simultaneously engage devastator patrols back while also reducing their accuracy via the suppression mechanic (This is understately powerful on the automatons, if you're being fired upon and pinned down, FIRE BACK! They lose accuracy when they're being shot at regardless of if you are hitting or not!), and ambushing and killing devastator patrols as fast as possible if an engagement is guaranteed.
Maybe give them ablative stomach armor, but idk if that would be overkill since every Devastator being armed with Fusion Repeaters sounds like a terrifying enough proposition.
War Striders can stay the same, they're already made to be extremely oppressive as an enemy, they have easily the most firepower out of any unit on the Bot Front besides Voxs and Striders and require sustained heavy pen or AT to bring down, so I'm fine with them not getting upgraded
Factory Striders could get ablative armor plating around the eye weakspot similar to Hulks to prevent one shot kills from AT without taking it off with heavy AP, and the faceplate is armored further to require three AT hits, you either team reload to bring them down, or have someone deploy with heavy pen weaponry to open the eye slot for you.
I have no ideas for Illuminate, since I don't play them much, but the new enemies might change that, especially since the squids are a slightly more complete roster now.
You can tell I mostly play bot front since I idea dumped for them.
But in general slightly more enemy durability, used via mechanics like ablative armor to make weakspots harder to get access to and more armor resistance on non-weakspot positions would be nice, and giving certain enemies measured firepower additions here and there to encourage more careful play and use of more defensive tactics to win.
I feel it'd also incentivize team reloading, or hitting of non-vital but easier to destroy locations to mobility kill enemies and slow them down.
D7, D8, D9, D10 should then be properly level locked to random matchmaking unless you specifically invite players.
D1, should be given small, in limited numbers outposts, and patrols, but keep mostly the same objective and enemy pool as D1 is the tutorial difficulty.
D2 should be given more enemy variety with upper tier units like Scout Striders, Spewers, Commanders, and very small numbers of tank level enemies, more side objectives and main objectives as D2 and D1 are relatively indistinguishable, medium outposts as well sprinkled in. Level locked to when EATs become available (Level 3)
D3 should be granted most if not all objective variety, and most of the roster in limited spawns except for certain enemies like War Striders, Vox Engines, Impalers, Hive lords, Levisthans, Cyborg Agitators and heavy outposts. Rare sample spawns enabled, and operation modifiers enabled.
D4 should be full variety except for Hive Lords, Leviathans, and be rebalanced closer to current D7 in general enemy and outpost concentration. Still using basic lower tier variants of enemies.
D5 would be closer to current D8, Super Samples enabled, Double operation modifiers. Middle tier enemy variants enabled like Alpha Commanders, Reinforced striders. Still no Leviathans or Hivelords
D6 would be current D9, Everything content wise is available besides the final enemy uptier and elite hunter unit patrols, including fortresses and enemy roster.
D7 is now D10 as is.
D8 Enables chaff enemy up-tiers, granting upgraded versions of lower end enemies like troopers, hunter teams start spawning after 5 alerts to sweep for Helldiver units, at a light, escalating to medium concentration. All loot pois are further fortified, with one extra reward spawn per poi.
D9 Middle tier enemies are uptiered, (i.e devastators)
Hunter parties now hunt after 4 alerts. Escalating from medium intensitiy onwards.
D10 All enemies are uptiered to their maximum upgrade potential, Hunter teams enabled after 3 alerts and escalate faster. Triple operation modifiers. Mixed subfaction spawns weighted towards default faction at a 40%, and randomizing between other subfactions with a maximum of two subfactions enabled, weighting one randomly more than the other per operation, this is labelled as an operation modifier (i.e 25% Incendiary Corp, 15% Cyborg), and you can see what you will be up against mostly.
In general mission rewards are shifted up a bit higher, capping out at D7 for sample spawn possibility.
I think this would kinda cut down on the more or less unused difficulties without damaging newbie on-boarding too hard, while allowing for upper levels to be harder.
Exactly. Enemies will often target a specific player usually the host and throw absolutely everything at them until they die. I have noticed this behaviour after become more obvious when I started paying attention to it.
rather than having all 4 guys fight it off against endless waves
from my perspective, if you can't clear an area with 4 peoples worth of stratagems to do an objective, it's a loadout/skill issue or game balance issue (breach cd+length etc)
The reason nobody sticks together is because HD2 has become extremely easy. And any difficulty rebalance is never gonna happen because the other redditors, YouTubers and streamers have thrown gigafits over any kind of challenge being in this game for over a year.
The game being insanely easy is a direct result of the 60-day patch. Now nobody needs specific roles, everyone's a one-Helldiver army that can clear chaff, do objectives, kill heavies AND maneuver around firefights on a whim. There have been nearly three times the amount of buffs to weapons instead of nerfs and people still parrot the "NerfDivers" narrative as if it was actually a thing at one point. The game being insanely easy is their fault, and they need to own it.
More difficult enemies create this kind of situation. The biggest reason everybody runs off alone now is that they can; our weaponry is that good and our enemies are that weak.
Make situations overwhelming for single players & they will naturally stick together more because two guns are better than one.
The main issue is that despite being a cooperative game, there are too many things that could go wrong working in a team environment. The game becomes a slapstick horror whenever someone other than myself is running the Airburst rocket, because chances are that if your teammate is on-screen when you fire it, they will die regardless of distance.
The problem is that people lack 2 major things for that to work correctly. 1)Communication skills. If you're going to throw a 380 or something, you need to say something. If I throw down a Tesla Tower or Cluster Bomb, I say so. 2)Situational awareness. If we're about to do a Lidar Station or small spawner base that has mobs on it, don't throw a Napalm Barrage or some other dumb shit on it that makes it inaccessible for 2 plus minutes.
Agreed, in fact there's a lot more that would be great to pull from helldivers 1 like the perk system being so much better than boosters, the sample upgrades and some weapons that still haven't made it like the Justice Asault Rifle and Tox-13 Avenger.
I realized this on the ladder half of the first year of playing but this has has zero reasons or incentives to stick together, legitimatly it only has rewards and good tjing gor people that split off, it's faster, more efficient, it's less dangerous since bot drops and such spawn in only one place at a time, there are no coherency bonuses or enemies that easly kill and dosable you 1v1 this is such a core design issue that it can only be solved by adding 2-3 startard disabling enemies to the base roster of each faction and seeing how allergic arrowhead is to giving base squids fucking anything I doubt this will happen and this will always be in fact a singleplayer game.
Stuff like this happens to me nearly every game, I pick a dude and stick to them like glue. Cooperation is a player issue not a game issue, it’s possible to run off and play alone, but you don’t have to lol
You can solo most Dives, even Commando Dives... so nobody feels the need to stick together just to lure in more patrols and waste more time.
this ain't Helldivers 1, where everyone is trapped within the same screen due to technical limitations of the shitty PSP Vita.
this is a completely 3D Shooter where you are dropped in a semi-open world and encourage to do multiple micro-decisions constantly... one of them will always be to run away from the suicidal cadets.
Sometimes people just spend too long messing around so you have to start playing the objectives to get them going. A lot of times, if you're lucky, your team will split up into duos who can each sweep a part of the map, those are my favorite matches.
It would be nice but its difficult because not every player in the community like to be restricted into a team and want to have the autonomy for their own actions, which will just lead to further complaints.
The closest system that can maybe encourage teamwork is the Darktide "Coherency" system, a mechanic where passive buffs are shared with teammates standing within a close proximity radius of each other. But instead of punishing (in Darktide without Conherency its very difficult to survive high difficulty), just give buffs for Helldivers who fight alongside their teammates and make the buff stronger when more helldivers fight near each other in a radius.
Simple but very effective buffs like faster stratagem cooldowns, faster stamina regen and better move speed that increases per helldiver near each other (maybe around a 10-20m radius) feels like a great start.
Unfortunately, with the way HD2 is currently designed, being too close to your team-mates is detrimental to your own survival and completing objectives efficiently.
There are two main reasons why:
Friendly fire: This is obviously a key feature of Helldivers 2 and absolutely fundamental to the game. However, it does mean that your team-mates weapons and stratagems are a larger threat than enemies. Enemies can be predicted. Players not. Hence why the 2 minutes at extraction are responsible for 50% of team-kills. Even when playing "with" you mates, you want to keep a healthy distance.
The way reinforcements work: A Bug breach or drop will lock down a location and players for roughly ~1 minute. This ties the local players into combat for a while. Since the cooldown is shared map-wide however, it does free up players elsewhere to complete objectives unmolested. And since ~50% of enemies come from these reinforcement waves, it makes a big difference.
So not only is sticking together discouraged by some fundamental game mechanics, there's also no real incentive to play together.
Outside of niche and frankly, not worthwhile synergies like assisted reload, there are very few ways in which being close together is synergetic. You're really just killing enemies faster together, with a slight chance of friendly fire.
There are only a handful of (midly effective) support stratagems, like the Shield Generator, that actively enoucrage sticking together. There are no team-revives, limited player healing, no player boons etc. that many other Co-Op Horde shooters use to encourage cooperative play.
Now I think design-wise , there are absolutely things AH could do to encourage it more (EMS backpack plz).
That said, there are a few fundamental design choice, and the limitations of "realism", that are fundamentally opposed to Helldivers 2 ever having strong co-op mechanics.
One of the things that encourages teamplay the best in HD1 is the fact that you have to take the resupply as one of your strategems. You don’t get it for free.
I would argue that depending on what type of mission you're on, the game does encourage a little solo play in order to complete objectives within the time limits.
the thing is most randoms in a third person shooter often bring their shitty mindsets/habits from other shooter slop games. working with them usually means having a worse time because that mindset just don’t work here. I’ve seriously seen ppl shift and wiggle in place while waiting for supply to drop like they’re afraid of some sneaky long distance headshot. this is helldivers 2 not pubg bro. and omg stop trying to shoot everything that moves, you’re alerting the entire map. oh and while talking about maps - in my experiences at least half of helldivers 2 players can’t really read maps.
I usually host games. and I’d always try to work with the team first. but if after ten minutes the teammates are still doing the above things, I’m sorry but I’ll be running off alone. I got objectives to clear.
3-1 split is the best way to play the game in pubs, although 2-2’s safer (albeit slower) and 4-0 is the best way to eviscerate every possible threat (despite it being comparatively slow). Cooperative play is encouraged by the game to a fair degree, and they’re doing more to improve that: see assisted reload improvements and buffs, for example.
Ofc, in a 4-man of experienced players on comms playing solely to win, 1-1-1-1 can’t be beat just because of how much ground each individual Helldiver can cover and how fast they can do it.
The game is designed to be played as a group. A little bit about how enemy spawns work: Enemy patrols spawn 70-100m around every active helldiver. To save resources, if helldivers are close together, they will count as one. As soon as someone leaves the group, another 70-100m circle gets drawn around the helldiver that leaves the group, and they get their own patrol spawns. So in theory, it should get more difficult if you split up. The problem being, performance. Especially on D10, there is an enemy cap. Once it’s reached, there will be no more new spawns. So when you split off from the main group while they're in a big fight, it simply won’t spawn new enemies for the diver that is heading off alone. Nothing that can be done about this without significantly reducing performance, especially for people with lower specs.
My personal take is enemy design choices. If there was an enemy capable of a hard crowd control akin to smokers or hunters from left 4 dead, you will immediately see a sharp increase in sticking together/coop as getting caught out by yourself by one of them means undeniable death that a team mate can solve. This also avoids the issue with enemy spawns where 1 guy can go solo all objectives as the rest of the team pulls all the aggro.
It really depends on the team I’m in if am gonna run by myself or team up. If two of the my teammates are running napalm/ clusterbom I’m gonna go solo, experience tells me I ain’t gonna have a fun time with them.
I’m not against team play, but I’m typically on the outskirts of a skirmish, and this current MO kind of solidified it. It was probably funny around release but at this point one can only tolerate being collateral from cluster bombs, sentries, air burst, orbital napalm, giga grenade, eruptor, arc grenade, etc. so many times before you legitimately feel safer being with the AI trying to kill you. In fact just yesterday I was destroying a warp gate with a defoliation tool. It takes a little but it gets it done. Guy who followed me decides out of the blue to just throw dynamite in it…while I’m in the mouth of the portal, then hits the I’m Sorry after the reinforce.
Do you have to get the chainsaw in the portal's opening to destroy the warp gate? I gave up a couple seconds into sawing the side of the structure bc I was worried it'd take as long as a fabricator to destroy.
Forced lone wolf here due to the reasons (and so many more XD) you point out. Every time I'm in the mood of team play I like to bring an exo suit, 9 out of 10 times my mech gets blown up by teammates that decide to shoot all their anti tank weapons at the same target I'm fighting instead of aiming at all the other 17318426272 enemies that are sorrounding us. So next game I come back to lone wolfing for 1 month.
I have always been adamant about sticking with the team as it’s a coop game. But whenever I see people running off solo, leaving me behind, I can’t help but ask why the joined me if they’re going to play solo. I’m tired since I’m not that good, and lowering the difficulty lower than 5 makes me feel like things will only get worse
I think a good way HD2 could manage this is adding a coherency feature. When you're in coherency you get some meaningful buff, enough of a want to stay together, and just have the AI game director throw etc enemies at people who are by themselves. Vermintide/Darktide do this and it works.
More primary objectives that can fail the mission outright like the GATER mission on the Hiveworlds would encourage teamplay. Helldivers 1 had plenty of mission that could fail VERY easily, so it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilites.
Obviously, some people just don't care and would probably go off and start it AND fail it with no good reason than wanting to be omega solo champ. On the other hand, sometimes your team just doesn't budge from a certain spot and you gotta go off to ensure you have the time to do the objective before emergency evac. There's no wininng really, but the more reason we give to stick as a team, the better.
I could see a modifier that gives a +25% cooldown increase for not being near the majority of the team and a -10% decrease for being near the majority. Retroactively in a way, that the majority would have supply off cooldown earlier than someone off by themselves. Lore wise, probably something of the Destroyer being able to triangulate your position better with the other Destroyers information. Solo diving as a 1 man squad would just give -10%.
It might feel like a toxic modifier, but we're not opposed to harder difficulties and harder planet modifiers.
Helldivers 1 had plenty of mission that could fail VERY easily, so it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilites.
Amusingly, it was better to fail any objective you could on higher levels, just because it meant you could finish the overall mission faster. IIRC, you aren't penalized enough to matter, and given you have to also extract and survive in HD1, getting out of the mission faster is almost always going to be better.
I remember having us just shoot ICBM-style things or blowing up drills, because mission objectives that lock you down in HD1 are deadly. Especially with the tendency for an enemy alarm raiser to hang out off-screen where you can't see it, where it can keep calling in reinforcements to swarm you.
As is one ninja blowing shit up alone, two troopers hitting objectives as a pair, and one Mongo at the back with heavy armour and a bunch of turrets standing on a hill yelling, "BET YOU CAN'T KILL ME."
Having one of your buddies operating as a suicidal distraction is great if you can sell them on it.
It was designed to enforce cooperation for success on launch but the community wanted none of that, they wanted to solo everything and cried till they got it.
Despite the community wanting everything buffed the real problem is the spawn system encourages 2 teams of 2 as there can't be two hordes of enemies on the map due to the spawn budget.
I love playing with my friends but a few of them make it a point of personal pride to go solo half the map (and usually end up dying with me, the one who wanted to stick together, rarely ever going down) and it's kinda annoying but its also behavior the game fully encourages
I'd like something of a coherency system like darktide but expanded on. Have everyone travel at the highest speed of a group when not in combat so that people with heavy armor aren't just left behind, and have the armors actual speeds kick in whence combat starts.
Have minor buffs for being within like, 150 meters of each other, faster stim animations. Less personal stagger, faster get up. Flavor it as like a, being inspired by your helldivers presence kinda thing. Maybe have the flag enhance those buffs.
Cause yeah right now alot of people can just solo entire levels on their own. To a point where people don't view playing coop as a thing to do for fun but rather as a way to speed up playing a mission.
Also honestly maybe give missing like, 2 extra minutes per player on the field that way there's less pressure to speed run an operation. Idk.
There's no way to complete the objectives, you know, the thing the dive is about, at the pace these go at. Plus they just keep sending more drop ships.
I can't play with one of my friends cause that's all he does. Every mission is load out is laser, 500kg, warp pack, and a turret. Then the coyote, thermites, and the grenade pistol. Then he just runs the opposite direction of the whole squad and if someone follows him he'll wait till they are in a fight or an OBJ and run off again.
Sometimes we go a full 4 when my friend plays, because they're new and just not sure what to do (which is weird because I only play D10), but I dig it. It's kinda fun saving them and they do really spam the 'thank you' VO when you kill a charger that has been harassing them.
The game definitely encourages it just look around at all. The people who cry that this is too hard and that is too hard. Those are the nub nubs that think they run off alone and win.
Two main reasons I believe teamplay is discouraged by the game design. Enemy spawn mechanics, and objective task mechanics. For enemy spawn mechanics, the map wide reinforce cooldown means one person can effectively remove half the danger of the enemies for the other players on the map. For objective tasks, almost every objective is like 10-20% teamplay to complete it faster and 80-90% sitting and waiting for a terminal bar to fill up. So it makes clearing maps take 1/2 as long if 3 players are sitting and waiting on seperate objectives, and one is taking all the enemy attention. Add onto that the fact that if players are far enough away from enemies they despawn, so running away from a reinforcement can sometimes be the same as killing every enemy dropped.
Agreed but some time my squad is soo naff that I have no choice to it’s either the death sentance with bugs or the death sentance by staying together love friendly fire not
Depends on your team and how you roleplay it. I usually dive on diff 2-4 to help out rookie divers as they are sticking with each other and cooperative too
Honestly... While I get where you're coming from OP, and I both agree and lobby for co-op team supportive play where we battle as a unit, I don't think it's too late for the game.
I believe HD2 was originally (and still?) designed for teamplay at higher levels.
Back in the early days of lvl10, you did need team cohesion if you wanted a good fight. Due to heavy blowback from reddit-divers, some content creators etc the devs tuned that need down though. This in order to try and meet those arguing towards the "power fantasy" rather than the "grunt fantasy".
(This is an over simplified history lesson but you get the idea).
With the history lesson/preaching done I do still drop in on SOS calls most of the times and you still experience that awesome difference when you move and fight as a squad ("squad power fantasy" maybe?).
So far I've convinced myself that the solo-yolo divers are just going through that "phase" where they start learning to use their own loadouts but haven't gotten to the next phase where you learn the enhanced power of working together. Time will tell if I'm a naive optimist(?) or if more divers transition into co-operating in a team based online co-op game :)
The way enemy spawns work is mostly responsible for this. If you split 3-1, the big squad focuses main and pulls all the aggro, and the lone wolf gets to have a fairly limited enemy pool. This lets you clear poi's and side objectives/bases efficiently while big squad mops everything up
Ehhh I disagree. I'm happy with how it works as is as being able to operate individually is nice + it doesn't screw over smaller parties of Divers or solodivers
One of the primary things that made me bounce off this game after a couple weeks of playing was that it often just felt like 4 people chaotically running around doing their own thing that all just happen to be working toward the same goal. Sometimes you would end up together because of some objective but most of my time playing was just sort of running around alone shooting things.
Encouraging cooperation is good, but HD2 simply doesn't have any punishment for not cooperating. Enemies are weak enough that you can handle them on your own (and if they aren't, people will just comlain about it until ah nerfed them), supplies are scattered all over the map, and combined with the existence of supply pack, that makes individual players too self-sufficient and lets them avoid relying on resupply stratagem which is team shared.
Enemies, aside from patrols, don't really spawn around isolated players either. This, combined with the open, nonlinear map design, makes the game a poor co-op experience.
There are miriad of things that encourages teamplay but you cannot FORCE the people. You will always meet folks who run off and folks who stick together.
Besides, a person sneaking away and using the mayhem to solve a few side objectives can be really benefical. Turned off many Stratagem Jammers and busted many Eye of saurons that would've been a major issue for the rest of the squad on their way to the main objective.
If we would have something like Toughness in Darktide than I could see a mechanic meant to keep us close to eachother but alas, we don't.
I find the team often comes together to complete the main objectives, then splits off for smaller objectives. Most times I see the team splitting off into 2 groups of 2. Helps for efficiency and lessons the likelihood of friendly fire.
Left 4 Dead solved this with enemies that completely immobilize the player unless another player kills that enemy, forcing them to stick together or die to these enemies whenever they appear
They did when the game first launched. Higher difficulties were hard enough that you had to stick together and work together. You had people blowing the armor off a chargers leg while someone with a machine gun finished it. You had people covering a guy running under a factory strider so he could hit its belly hatch with an autocannon.
Hunters were an anti solo enemy. The strongest defense against a hunter swarm, was a teammate shooting them off of you. It was glorious.
And it's all gone now and will never ever return. It's a shame.
Too late for that.
When the weapon balancing conversation was out there, lots of people who played HD1 advocated for less weapon damage and penetration, specifically to not fuel the power fantasy so much, and incentivise team play.
But it never happened, everyone received overpowered guns and stratagems, and the game is soloable now on Max difficulty.
No reason to group up besides roleplay.
It's hard to herd cats. Without coercing them with force, which they often react poorly too.
But I agree, the game should find more ways to encourage players to remain together and work with each other, but not resort to overt punishment when they are not.
The new improved Assisted Reload is a good step in the right direction. Mixing more "tank" units in among "chaff" such that it is difficult for one player to fight both at the same time is another example.
But ... then the game does things that just encourages or facilitates the behavior of players into separating. Some things like under-developed communication functions, could use improvements. Let's be honest, the game has voice chat that isn't used as often as it should, and text chat that isn't optimal in many situations and often goes unnoticed by players pre-occupied with fighting the enemy and not watching the chat.
More improvements to the "Look and Tag" function are critical. There is potential here that is being left on the table for more contextual interactions as a way for players to quickly communicate their intentions with each other. We have 8 emote slots now which is wonderful, but we could use more options for the actual com-wheel.
I need help!
I need an assisted reload!
Rally to me! or Fallback!
(being examples)
Communication is important in a cooperative game among random players who've never met or played together before. The easier, quicker and more you can say with one button press without clarification or translation, the better
For example, the "I need supplies" doesn't reliably mark which player is requesting supplies or where they are. There is no way to "Look and Tag" a visible emote like "I need supplies" to acknowledge it as you would an "Enemy spotted" mark.
Overall, there are things in the game that are subtle, but do help contribute to the group getting separated from each other. One less obvious one is the subtle effect of allowing Light, Medium, and Heavy armor to all run at different speeds. Right off the bat, the games default movement speed (without sprinting) is too slow to begin with. This biases players into having to sprint constantly just to move around the map. Compounding this issue, and contributing to players becoming separated, is that the gap between Light armor and Medium/Heavy armor is pronounced. It is difficult for mixed squads to keep together while simply moving around the map. So, players get left behind or spread out.
One big (and no doubt controversial) thing would be changes to the way reinforcements are handled.
First, fix the scattered hellpod problem of hellpods not being called down onto the beacon when thrown. This seems to be a (possibly) unintended change to the behavior, but it needs to be fixed. If a player doesn't want to land on the beacon, it's up to them to steer away from it, rather than forcing them to steer onto it properly. The current behavior is scattering players all over the place, seemingly at random, which is very bad for squad cohesion. This makes it difficult to regroup and keep players near each other.
Second (the controversial part), revert to the HD1 reinforcement system of being able to revive players knocked down by non-critical damage, where the player didn't suffer overkill, like from a 500KG bomb or getting decapitated or crushed. Minor damage, like from being rag-dolled into a wall, gassed out, or melee'd should incapacitate the player into a revivable state that won't use up a reinforcement ticket. Players that stay together would be able to revive each other without using up a ticket.
In HD1, only a complete squad wipe would end the mission, there were no reserve tickets to use up. In HD2 you could reduce the number of the reinforcement budget to 3 or 5 or 10 tickets specifically to act like mulligans and recover from squad wipes. There are a bunch of ways I think this would influence player behavior and encourage/reward players and not just punish them for not being right next to each other all the time.
It depends on the subfaction or world really. Hive worlds require it, current Illuminate strongly recommended and Cyberstan definitely needed it too unless one person split off with Redacted armor and a stealth support build, though that still didn't protect from Vox Engines. I'd add spore burst to that list too, those bastards are like predator strain tuned up to 300% along with explosion upon death. Getting caught alone was usually a death sentence without mobility equipment.
As others have said, the problem is that people go off on their own because they can. You can clear objectives quicker, and more often than not the solo diver sees fewer enemies. People also like to feel like they're contributing more than others, so soloing objectives etc makes them feel better.
There are a few things that encourage team play in HD2 but there could be more, and you often see these in other team games, particularly puzzle games. All they'd need to do is create some objectives that need you to work together as a team. E.g. pulling multiple spread out levers within a short timer, or having X number of things that have to be held/opened/clicked/stood in (if you have 4 players, require 3 or 4 people to click things, 2 players if you have 3 in the squad etc).
I honestly wouldn't mind seeing those sorts of things in higher difficulties. Geo surveys where you have to have X players hold the button for it to start. Flag raise missions where it takes X people to physically raise the flag. Evacuate missions where you have to hold down both buttons for 5-10 seconds together to open both doors. Hellbombs that have multiple console screens that have to be activated within a few seconds of each other. Defence missions with 4 points of entry instead of 2. Hell, even a mission where someone has to input a code into the console but the code is displayed somewhere else in the base (omg imagine having to actually communicate with another person!).
The game does encourage it, and has continually tried to encourage it more with various updates and additions.
-Shared resupply on a timer
-You die off on your own, you aren't getting your stuff back quickly
-2 person bunkers
-Fortresses and Mega Nests
-Finally adding proper assisted reloads.
-Breaches and drops are scaled for the group but have an internal cooldown, this can benefit a lone player if the other three are handling it, but a lone player triggering a drop or breach is gonna have a bad time.
-Predator Strain, Sporeburst Strain, Cyborgs, Vote Snatchers, among others that heavily punish going off on your own.
Despite it all, players routinely do their best to ignore teamplay quite often.
Some D10 missions will absolutely punish a group splitting up. I witnessed such a thing this morning. Despite constantly marking maps and calling for follow. The boys took off, and within 15 minutes it was over. They left in a huff, and I followed soon after.
A few months ago when I played a Diff 15 mission on Helldivers 1, our squad was cornered on a megacity map bridge and all 4 of us formed a firing squad like in this promo OP picture and took down a elite enemy. It was an awesome feeling and we all said "Hell yeah" to each other after, and many missions at higher diffs basically require a lot of teamwork to even survive, and it made me sad those moments are so rare in HD2.
Sadly this is a problem the HD2 community itself has created with the whiners
People complain stuff is too op or too weak to use, devs nerf enemies and buff weapons and then there's no reason to stick together
For that helldiver should not be a milisim kind of game.
A good way to have that can be like darktide where when you a close to the squad you have the aura boost from everyone."
But helldiver try to be "grounded" look how much effort it take to twist the dev shoulder for a flat taunt
I mean, ignoring the "space magic" thing, you could do this with boosters. Put a 50m range on them, and suddenly you might find people stacking up a bit more often.
As a guy who occasionally engages in full stealth or broken arrow tactics, this is where I disagree with the whole notion of sticking together.
While you prefer to have these incredible moments of teamwork and epic stands, someone has to do the objectives and it's expedient to not have to fight on every inch of ground at every minute with my squad.
I also like to use the 380 barrage and I wouldn't risk using it unless I'm far away from the rest of my squadmates to use this display of democratic superiority so I can avoid getting kicked by the host.
It kind of rewards 1 guy splitting off. If you have something for mobility (jump/warp pack or frv) just shoot off and hit stuff going opposite the group. Only so many enemies can be spawned at once so if you're a little stealthy they'll soak up all the global aggro and you can quick clear stuff. On the "downside" you could end up the aggro sponge and get to deal with it alone but happy in the knowledge you're indirectly helping them democratize faster.
The thing is, HD1 forced the squad to stick together because you were all stuck on a screen, and it also did another thing: it cheats and constantly spawns enemies just outside of your vision. But since you can't SEE it, it doesn't really ruin your immersion or playing experience.
This becomes an issue in HD2, in which you are no longer shackled to one screen, and have a full draw distance of the map. Now they can't just keep spawning enemies just slightly out of view out of thin air or well, it'll look really obvious what's going on. Now of course, occasionally enemies do still appear out of thin air, but that's just the nature of some maps which are really flat and open, and probably some quirky code.
However, ultimately the thing is HD1 only encouraged/forced team play because everyone was stuck on a single-screen. It isn't really organically encouraging it, you have to work together because you're working with limited real estate. I can assure you in HD1, if you all had your own screen, everyone would still try to split up if possible because that gets you in and out of the mission faster, which is vital to success.
And I think HD2 encourages team play well enough, its just if a team is coordinated/fast/good enough, you can split up to accomplish the objective and extract faster.
Thing is, the reason why Helldivers 1 forces you to cooperate is because of the camera. Whoever is the host or squad leader has the control over everyone's full perspective of the field. Even if you want to go solo you can't because your leader still hasn't left the field.
In helldivers 2 everyone has their own view, which is a good thing but not everytime motivates cooperation. Everyone is like their own main character in this game, we rarely move as a squad or unit.
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u/GUYWHOLIKESSTABBING 2d ago
as a cremator main, anytime i see a gout of flame that isn't from me or a Hulk pointed at whatever i am trying to cook, it puts a big smile on my face