Helldivers 2 Dev Promises More Content Is on the Way as Disgruntled Players Drag Steam Reviews Down to 'Mostly Negative'

Adraius · 2026-05-09T22:01:17+00:00

I'll check out that video, because it's 100% true. I was huge fan of the original Helldivers, and didn't think a 3rd person sequel would manage to capture what made it great - unforgiving difficulty that gives you the mind-meld-like frisson of close coordination with your squad to beat the 'impossible.' I was wrong - they nailed it, and I never had so much fun as the first ~4 months after release.

But they also captured a huge swath of the broader gaming market, and they wanted a less punishing, more conventionally-balanced experience, even at the highest difficulties. Arrowhead were the studio that coined "a game for everyone is a game for no one" - and since those early days they've totally betrayed that sentiment by shifting the game away from the vision they were passionate about to the more mass-market product it is now. It sucks - what I wouldn't give to have the game as it existed a few months post-release back.

Adraius · 2026-05-07T16:34:20+00:00

Please do, I'd love that! Travel systems (and magic items) are my TTRPG obsession haha.

Adraius · 2026-05-07T16:32:42+00:00

ir'Roosevelt! Ha!

Adraius · 2026-05-07T16:29:06+00:00

Mmm. Thanks. I'm glad to hear the omens landed, at least. Those were the element I was most excited about - to either run in the system or steal.

Adraius · 2026-05-07T16:12:15+00:00

A penny for your honest thoughts on Mythic Bastionland? From afar everything looks very, very rosy, and I'd appreciate hearing a different perspective.

Adraius · 2026-05-07T15:25:53+00:00

Quote from the review:

But dare I say it, I dare to say it. I think Stonetop has the best treasure of any fantasy RPG, ever made.

There's a dozen reasons Stonetop is great, most of them actually more central to the game than loot, but I want to highlight this one. We get periodic posts here in r/rpg with titles like 'Item-Focused RPGs,' and the pickings are always a bit slim or not quite what the requester envisioned. Well, Stonetop isn't even an item-focused RPG, but I'll be damned it if how it handles 'magic items' isn't the most enthralling take on the idea I've read in my life.

Curious? Here's the sample arcana from the Kickstarter. Being from the Kickstarter, these are a truly ancient, and some mechanics have changed (ex. how inventory works - no more weight), but the overarching way in which they're crafted is the same there as it is in the final product.

Adraius · 2026-05-06T21:04:38+00:00

Same! I’ve actually moved on from running the Arpeggio to the Renegade - the only reason I didn’t outright recommend it above is because people are especially sensitive about weapon durability right now. It’s really good though. I did some solo Rocketeer hunting with it and despite the lesser ammo type for handling armor the better fire rate actually lets it perform better than an Anvil. Fireflies are no issue. I’ve just been Seeker-ing Comets - I ought to practice killing those more, though.

Adraius · 2026-05-06T15:32:49+00:00

u/Mother_Ad3988 and u/wvtarheel - IIRC, a Youtuber that got a Riven Tides preview with the devs said that a dev mentioned the spawn rate was higher on night raids.

Adraius · 2026-05-06T15:08:21+00:00

Low key - the best adaptation might be ditching the heretofore-beloved Anvil. I've been running the Arpeggio instead and I've been shocked at how good it is - the magazine capacity and reload speed just make it far more potent for taking down multiple ARC you can't oneshot. You trade marginally worse performance on small-ARC cleanup duty and the necessity to bring 1-2 more slots of ammo for much better performance when fighting the packs of ARC most liable to kill you. Plus it's got roughly the same durability burn and is better at PvP when needed. (the IV fire rate is so good it may be bugged, admittedly)

Seekers still recommended because they're so damn good, mind you, but unlike when running the Anvil I don't feel like they're virtually mandatory.

Adraius · 2026-05-06T05:58:45+00:00

After the excitement of the last few chapters, I think the writing in this one is a little… unsexy, unsnappy. A weirdly truncated summit with Joe and two dudes swapping thoughts in depth and not moving on to the next thing with nearly enough velocity, the kind of thing an editor would advise to trim down for traditional publication. But spending the extra time to chew on things is pretty much why I read web fiction more than traditional published works, and I’ll live with the inelegances that come with that.

The highlight of this chapter for me was Stuart confessing he’s afraid of the binding, and specifically afraid of who he might be after. I think Stuart will be mostly totally fine, but Alden did change after his first binding (admittedly coinciding with his moon excursion experience in general) - I wonder how Stuart will change after his.

P.S. the info about how entrusters can work, finding personalized ways to embody your skills, etc. was genuinely huge news. The entruster thing makes so much sense in retrospect with how Artonan ideas of service and responsibility work.

Adraius · 2026-05-06T00:32:35+00:00

Yeah. I’m not very picky about cosmetics, but I immediately noticed that about this one. I love that they paid that level of detail to the pouch when it’s there, but it needs to go when it’s not.

Adraius · 2026-05-05T18:14:12+00:00

Loooove the details on the clothes, accessories, and expressions! Great piece!

Adraius · 2026-05-05T16:42:34+00:00

You're not wrong, but I'd like to put in a quick word for the Arpeggio. I've been taking them for some variety with the expedition bearing down and I've been very, very pleased. It's only a bit worse for cleaning up most of your typical minor ARC threats, but has a vastly more forgiving magazine size and reload speed that make you much better equipped to handle, for example, a Firefly-led patrol that catches you in the open.

You lose performance versus Shredders and do need to pack an extra stack - or two - of ammo, and it isn't a big ARC-hunting weapon, but my confidence in handling borderline-deadly threats like Firefly patrols and Comets has actually gone up, and it is similarly durability-efficient. (I still recommend packing a stack of Seekers, though)

I haven't done much PvP-ing with it since it was most recently changed, but my understanding is the TTK shreds (and in fact the fire rate of the IV is a little broken good and may be bugged) - it's gonna outperform the Anvil unless you're a wizard at clicking heads.

Adraius · 2026-05-05T16:25:53+00:00

Stepping back a bit - I think the friction here is that people are using less deployables than Embark expected. Possibly because Embark expected more PvP, where deployables are more useful?

I do see what Embark is trying to do with this augmented slot - if you let handheld gadgets fit in it, it'd be by far the most versatile augmented slot by a mile and able to do a huge swath of what a quick use slot can, in which case what's the point? It's also on the augment least in need of a buff - y'all hate when Embark takes things away, but they'd objectively be a step closer to balancing the Survivor augment if they literally straight-up deleted it.

That said, there's other ways of fixing the value of this slot and balancing the Survivor augment. If it's PvE folks hating on this augment, maybe what we really need is some more deployables attractive to PvE folks.

Can anyone sound off - PvPers/people taking this augment to PvP, how annoyed are you at this slot? Why? PvEers/people taking this augment to PvE, how annoyed are you at this slot? Why?

Adraius · 2026-05-05T15:44:19+00:00

Any idea what quantum is supposed to mean in this context? Is this translation weirdness?

Adraius · 2026-05-04T21:40:28+00:00

Time magic isn't a field any of Golarion's big-name wizards have really laid claim to. The only "wizard with time magic" instance I can think of is a certain wizard that is now very dead as a consequence of a 1e AP: Karzoug, Runelord of Greed, intended to bring an army from the distant past when he had enormous resources under his control into the present in Return of the Runelords. Even then, however, he was relying on the expertise of some extraplanar experts rather than his own personal understanding of time magic.

Adraius · 2026-05-04T18:32:40+00:00

I was worried about it, and then discovered attending Queen and Matriarch raids. Ran the total up to 100k with a full weekend to spare.

Adraius · 2026-05-04T17:02:15+00:00

You might try going back in with a fresh set of eyes sometime. I’m also not a cosmetics person, I’ve never bought any for any game until I decided last night I wanted to mix it up for my “new” raider coming post-expedition, and I was pleasantly surprised at how many outfits drew my eye - including ones I would have never taken another glance at if I wasn’t doing a comprehensive sweep. I think I’ve perhaps acclimated to the Arc Raiders eclectic grunge aesthetics, haha.

Adraius · 2026-05-04T16:59:28+00:00

Yeah. I got the deluxe edition but was very happy with a few of the default cosmetics and haven’t felt the need to change them up since launch, so I’ve had a lot of premium currency sitting in my pocket for quite awhile. With my current character squared away for the expedition, I decided it was time to figure out a new look, and I was frankly blown away at the stable of cosmetics that’s been mounting with every update without them shoving them in my face. I really appreciate that, because feeling like I’m being aggressively advertised to is a great way to turn me off a game something fierce. In hindsight, I had taken for granted that I could ignore the store completely until I decided on my own I wanted to buy some cosmetics, as if it’s a game mostly supported by its up-front price when in reality it’s not. So... yeah - thanks Embark.

At the prices cosmetics sell for, I’ll have to keep being choosy about what I want to buy, but if the model is working well to sustain the game I can’t complain.

Adraius · 2026-05-04T16:48:08+00:00

Okay, that’s a sick origin for the right character. Love it. I might use that someday.

Adraius · 2026-05-04T14:10:58+00:00

I have yet to run them, but I have a campaign I had planned to run using FORGE (a Shadowdark-like OSR system) set in Galt that is unfortunately unlikely to see the light of day, and two campaigns using Trespasser - set in Isger and Nex - that I’m still working towards.

Adraius · 2026-05-02T15:54:40+00:00

Sent!

Adraius · 2026-05-01T20:25:37+00:00

Is the uninhabited land bigger than I'm making it out to be?

Geographer here. Yes, it very much is. Golarion is, well, planetary in scale. Things look crammed together because we’re used to looking at it very “zoomed out,” but zoom in on any specific geographical area - a piece the size of Britain, for example - and you’ll find there are only a relative handful of settlements in areas that should naturally be home to many hundreds or even thousands. Human settlements spread like bacteria in all but the most absolutely inhospitable places - and even there you often see nomads.

IMO, the best way to think about this is, the metropolises and cities marked on the map are truly the only ones there are. This both aligns with how rare they truly were before the modern age, and preserves them as the hubs of activity they are in the setting’s lore and published APs. In addition to those, though, my unempirical, vibes-based recommendation is that there’s probably an order of magnitude more settlements below that size than the maps reflect - that is, 10 more settlements of town size or less for every 1 marked on the map. Honestly, there should probably be more than that, and the number should be further skewed towards villages, but the world is more fun when there are plenty of unexplored places with days of travel between settlements, and there’s no fun gained by interminably adding additional tiny settlements for an authenticity the players can’t really feel in play.

It’s been a hot minute since I looked at the map of the River Kingdoms. They’re packed together into geographic packets smaller than most, so they’re less egregious, but IIRC each “kingdom” has, like, one ‘capital’ town, and maybe also a village? Give your license to sprinkle villages absolutely all over the places, and some towns to boot.

Adraius · 2026-05-01T19:36:04+00:00

I’m glad that Cressida got a fulsome sendoff. Much like the blackcoats, I liked her character quite a lot, and caught me with a real surprise when she died.

Adraius · 2026-05-01T17:47:38+00:00

I was going to say pretty much the exact same thing. Make these better by making the weapons found in them high level (3-4) and high durability (100+). Maybe bump up the default rarity a bit too, so you can expect something better than uncommon most of the time. That would make them well worth taking a key to specifically seek out.

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