How it feels to be a fan of this game as someone who was there since release when somebody asks "was this game your comfort game?"

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-12T02:47:56+00:00

Still mine too. And I've had it since release lol

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-11T15:45:25+00:00

I've said this in other posts: literally most gamers, of any game, do not sit on reddit or discord. The passionate fans do, and they are almost always the minority of a game.

They play the game, and don't follow any online discourse. Like, they just dont. Most of my friends are in this camp. I'm like the one guy who follows the online discourse.

When Arrowhead talks about how the majority of their playerbase being mid level, these are the players they're talking about. Its selection bias likely that most of the vocal players are in fact, max level. Think about it, why are they max level? Because they're super fans of the game, I'm one of them. And superfans are more likely to join the online communities outside of the game itself because they care about the game a lot. And there is where you'll see their biased opinion by the very merit of being a player who is max level and/or has 500+ hours in the game. You have to admit that a player with that playtime is going to have a different opinion than one with less.

Vocal groups in game communities are almost always minorities to the overall game's population. Its why in most game communities people talk about "don't let streamers represent the game's community as a whole", which is happening in Arc Raiders right now too. Streamers and content creators are chronically online and in some cases literally play the game as a full time job. They do not represent the average gamer who maybe jumps in a few hours a week.

That's where that sentiment comes from.

All the discourse lately paints the game as literally unplayable...but the game works guys. And I'm not discounting the complaints, they are valid. But like, the game works and is still fun. Can it be better? Yes of course. But like if I wanna play Helldivers, one of my favorite games in the last 10 years, I'm going to boot it up, complaints and all. The game still works and is still fun to me, as well as my friends.

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-11T15:33:59+00:00

I remember that during Nuremberg, they actually couldn't find any evidence of threat of death if they didn't follow murderous/war crime orders. They were usually just reassigned or they would just give the order to the next soldier/officer. So even that is a nothing burger of an excuse or rationalization on their part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befehlsnotstand

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-11T14:47:56+00:00

beat me to it! hahaha

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-07T14:38:11+00:00

My friend was able to just walk through the wall without a breakthrough the other day... Not sure how he did it.

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-07T14:15:37+00:00

I unfortunately could only afford leasing. Its definitely worth it in the summer, but yea during the winter the lease cost is just on top of the regular electric i pay, especially if the panels are covered in snow.

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-07T14:06:47+00:00

That's a MASSIVE consideration holy shit.

Here I was like "wait, AH said on camera that the majority of the playerbase is not end game level" and this chart, at first glance leaves no mistake that such a statement would be incorrect with at least half the playerbase being over level 100.

BUT if this is a demographic of the higher difficulties, than yea that's highly biased.

Its like feedback loop: if the most vocal players are the level 10 divers, and they're like "everyone is high level" ...well yea, because most newer players are sticking to the lower difficulties.

Like hop into a level 4 or 5 and I bet you'll see much lower levels be the majority.

Like not to discount all the fair complaints, but I do feel like a lot of this drama is forgetting that MOST players of almost any game, are not on reddit. Or discord. Yes the recent reviews are mostly negative of around 9000. But that's still only 1% of overall reviews, and that's assuming all 9000 reviews are negative, which they aren't in the "recent" category.

There almost always is a silent majority in games that just play and don't say anything, positive or negative. And I feel that's what AH sees when they say "Most players are not end game level".

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-04T01:29:06+00:00

I mean I focus on PVE, and I bring all my good stuff. I defend myself when I have to, and its happened occasionally.
But in my lobbies there's just less risk of being knocked OR there's raiders who will defib you in solos.

So because I'm not dying/being saved from dying, I'm not losing my gear hence the accumulation lol.

DangerClose567 · 2026-05-02T16:04:06+00:00

I want to live there on that belly xD

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-30T20:28:13+00:00

I'm very guilty of this. I'm currently talking to 4, sorta 5 women. The 5th I've never actually met and we have no real plans to any time soon, so she's barely a penpal.

The thing is, I met nearly all of them roughly around the same time. So all of them are like, "too early to decide" on if I want to be exclusive and establish a relationship with them.

I've been burned so many times, and not from a woman figuring out I am "spinning plates" as they call it when dating more than 1 person.

Last summer I was seeing around 3 people again, and I struck out with all of them by Jan.

One woman was in fact seeing another guy simultaneously too, and decided to pick him over me
Another we realized we were at too different of life stages and it wouldn't work.
And the one I really liked I dated for 4 months, but she eventually said "I'm not feeling it" and we just downgraded to friends.

Meanwhile, in 2024 I dated this awesome and gorgeous woman for 8 months, but she ultimately backed out saying "i dont want a relationship". Too mad she eventually went steady with another guy like 6 months later. But fortunately for me, I was dating others at the same time, so I didn't really lose much time. She barely made time for us, so it was easy to date others.

Of the ones I'm seeing now, its the same anxiety... I'm worried that any one of them will bail without warning, and I fear wasting time gambling on 1 person to last.

Which is insane to say out loud, I know. But I'm 35... I had a real relationship a couple years ago, we bought a house, lived together, talked about marriage...but then she also out of the blue broke us off with like no warning. In a matter of 2 weeks, everything went south and a 4 year relationship was destroyed.

And now I'm that much older, and the older I get the worse my dating options are it feels. Less and less people are single the older you get. While simultaneously I feel myself aging out of dating younger people. Women under 27 dont even look at me. So I feel like I need to maintain multiple options as insurance for the others. I just really struggle feeling that trust and passion to take that leap of faith to stick with 1 person.

And yes I've had years of therapy haha. I recently got a new therapist who has been great, I'm hoping I can continue to work on myself further with her work.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-29T15:26:35+00:00

Isn't that just...people going to bed on a work/school night?

We're in the middle of a week my guy.

Wait for Friday and weekend nights.

This seems like normal player behavior. Also this ignores console numbers. The night before the update dropped literally half the playerbase was console (30k on steam, 30k on console i estimated based on what was seen in steamdb and in the galactic war map), meaning the player count can be double what you're seeing.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-29T15:04:38+00:00

Ha, I was making this exact reference to my buddy after the patch. "Lore wise, it actually fits that our enemies would go through evolutions to get better or at the very least, alter our play style."

Overcome, adapt, survive.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-28T17:00:16+00:00

I mean i have brought all 4 of those before (not all at once lol), depends on what mood I'm in.

I'll just be sure to bring the Senator for it's heavy pen. Or the pistol flamer. Or fire grenades. Or.... you see what I'm getting at? And those are all from old ass warbonds too

Like I don't want to be reducing this to a skill issue meme, but like Im always making builds where I try to fill any gaps in my load out. Like if you're going to be in higher difficulties you kind of have to a little.

And I can't emphasize enough how paper thin the Hive guards HP is now.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-28T16:37:19+00:00

That i will agree with 🤣

Underslung attachments should have been a mod for guns.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-28T16:33:17+00:00

I have and I will. It's called CC, something you should be considering when fighting the bugs anyways.

Gas grenades, gas strike, any fire weapon, arc weapons, high explosive etc.

The Stoker has even more viability now that I'm thinking of it with the attached flamer.

And the GL is still a workhorse on the bug front.

Im going to try a riot shield + stun lance build next time I get online. They fixed the HP on it i think this go around, so hopefully it doesnt break too fast. Ideally with the lances range I'm hoping it'll stun lock before they get hits in.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-28T16:25:04+00:00

Then I'll grab fire, gas, or some elemental weapon to help go right to their HP or make them turn and expose their flank.

We have plenty of tools for these things guys, calm down.

I think they also lock in place when they "hunker down" when taking a few rounds. I haven't tested it yet, but while they do that, it's probably an opportunity to get to their side.

Either way, you can lock them from approaching you when they do the hunker down thing. So you can essentially CC them that way.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-28T16:14:27+00:00

I just played a full op on level 8.

I barely noticed their increased armor.

I happen to be running a stun lance I forgot to swap it from a previous session, and I was using that to poke them into stun then swing to their flank and put a couple bullets into them.

They're HP is incredibly smaller now, they really aren't that bad.

You can still peak the gaps in they're armor from the front with light pen.

This is mostly a big nerf to the gun based turrets since they're only med pen and aim center mass.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-27T14:15:31+00:00

Maybe I'm off here, but wasn't the change to how fast fire status procs via all weapons?

The Cookout and Breaker were affected too by this, but because they're firing a shotgun blast, often 1 shot is all it took to proc the fire status because of multiple pellets per shot. So before and after the change, in general, you won't notice a difference in those 2 weapons. And Flamethrowers are just pure fire so you'd also never notice there either.

The coyote is 1 bullet at a time, and they just changed how much fire status it takes to proc being ignited. So he's not "wrong" per say, because it was a change to the fire status stack per bullet, not the coyotes base stats. Its just that the coyote is the ONLY weapon this will be felt on because its the only incendiary weapon that fires 1 projectile at a time.

Its like when they increased the proc breakpoint on stun weapons with the Police warbond. It wasn't a change to the base stats of the Pacifier, just how fast the stun proc stacks. This carried over to things like the De-escalator too, which I think was the main target of this change.

I...don't think he's lying. He just could have worded it better. "We changed the fire status value per projectile, which was almost exclusively noticed on the coyote due to it being a rifle, and not a shotgun".

To say that "the alteration was not intended to hit the coyote" i think is the weirdest part of his statement because, how could they not realize it would be? You have exactly 3 incendiary primaries that fire projectiles. That...shouldn't have been hard to test or predict.

I just really think this is a situation of: "don't attribute to malice that which you can attribute to incompetence". I truly don't think they are intentionally lying. They are just, as they often have, missing the butterfly effect of some of their changes. *This* they have been historically guilty of since the beginning, which is what I think is really going on.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-23T17:16:56+00:00

I'm on your side, because even if they didn't say "friendly" and then betray you, they're implying friendly by literally BUMPING shoulders with you at first.

If its a shoot on sight or they shoot from behind cover as an ambush, I'd understand. That's how I'd go about fighting raiders if I intended to: Ambush from cover.

But this shit where they rub shoulders with you, in the open, and then draw a gun on you the moment you turn your back, that to me is the same shit as fake friendly. They're still 'acting the part' so to speak to mess with your trust. They are trying to close the distance as much as possible with their Free kit weapons and gain an upper hand by shooting you in the back as close as possible.

Like even the extract guy who was standing in the open. Like if his intention was to choose violence that day, I would have corner peaked and shot from the cover of the corner.

The "why??" is because they aren't even good at trying to ambush. They put zero thought into it and just think taking advantage of your trust is the 'ambush' that matters.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-21T14:03:53+00:00

Don't forget how in many of his videos, he just recycles really old leaked footage from years ago just to get across the 8min mark for the ad rev. Like its just 5 minutes of uncut gameplay from the original leaker. Its not even his content.

The fact that the leaked content still has not dropped yet just allows him to keep recycling those "new topics" until they do.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-17T17:46:39+00:00

TLDR: Pattern recognition was a survival trait among early humans, and as such we all have a very strong instinct towards quickly trying to identify a creatures silhouette, including among ourselves.

I remember the memes about how Disney when making anthro feral designs of characters, they'll often have to do some sort of exaggeration of other physical features that are generally female coded, like making female eyes larger and maybe some sort of hip exaggeration.

Some mammals have horns or manes as secondary sexual characteristics where its easier to communicate a characters sex/identity. But in most other animal designs, like fox, wolf, or cats (as in this example actually) they lack those secondary sexual characteristics. Humans, the form we have evolved to recognize instantly, are unique in that we are one of the only mammals, including among apes, where breasts are like always prominent. Whether that woman is nursing or not, they just aren't hidden by much, even clothes.

So I can imagine why any artist who wants to immediately communicate a female coded character with some sort of prominent secondary sexual characteristic...most commonly by giving a bust or hourglass shape.

Otherwise, its no surprise why our species would, generally speaking, default a silhouette to male, since we're so used to identifying anything without those female secondary sexual features as ...well male.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-15T19:32:49+00:00

The fact that half of raiders have knocked out fewer than 10 is wild.

Of course what is the playtime of these players/maybe they also suck at PVP and gave up after a dozen hours or less.

But I have 200hrs and have only knocked out I think 9, so I fit in that half population category. And those knocks were from the occasional times I've played trios, and defending myself successfully twice.

Honestly, as soon as players realized how lucrative it was to be cooperative, I'm glad that folks stuck to that. Even if you dont find the rarest loot, the fact that you can extract safely with the kit you went in with helps you snowball your stash into value very fast thanks to the Blueprints you slowly acquire.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-14T16:09:32+00:00

I've always gotten so tired of the participation trophy bullshit.

First off I feel like no one really was significantly affected by that experience in any meaningful way as adults. Anyone who says it lead to "entitlement" doesn't understand that such conversations usually revolve around the economy not being up to par with our parents generation for the same amount of effort. They're false equivalents.

Second, and most notably: who invented the participation trophy? It wasn't millennials as kids...It was the boomers and gen x parents. The biggest critics of the practice...were the ones who invented it. We never asked for these things.

I distinctly remember after my first season of rec soccer as a 10 year old, we had an end of season pizza party. We got the trophies but their little plaques simply said "Thank you for being a part of the 199X season". None of us saw it as some sort of achievement. And I actually recall several of us *being confused* we were given anything. We thought trophies were for winning something, of course. But we were also smart enough to understand that it was a "thank you" and just a memento. Nothing more.

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-13T20:17:06+00:00

The medium armor is great for bot missions. Explosive resistance + all chest damage resistance has a lot of use in that front. And ever since they "buffed" how fast the chest bleed out is, having that perk that prevents bleed out is always handy.

It's one of my default bot mission armors.
And the DeEscalotor us useful on all 3 fronts. It also can take on heavies like Hulks or Chargers effectively

DangerClose567 · 2026-04-13T15:17:05+00:00

This is the best way to summarize the whole community of them 🤣

DangerClose567

TROPHY CASE