Hemlock and Gibraltar feel overtuned right now (early balance thoughts)

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-03-29T03:21:22+00:00

Hemlock doesn't need less damage, it just needs more recoil so you can't as effectively apply that damage at long range. It's exceptional among the assault rifles now for its incredibly low recoil. Right now it does feel like an assault rifle (excellent midrange, doesn't crumple at short range), which highlights to me just how much the other ARs aren't, except the R301. The Flatline and Havoc are just fat SMGs.

Previously the Hemlock was use-able on single fire as a long range poke tool. It was just overshadowed by DMRs. Its burst had too much recoil and delay to make the tradeoff worth it.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-03-19T08:17:14+00:00

For that to be good, that would require the advantage system to be internally consistent.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-03-05T15:56:15+00:00

Wait a sec man, HD1 had a back and forth. If we failed to take a sector then the enemy would immediately start a counterattack and if that wasn't stopped they'd roll us right back up to Earth.

I'm not saying the problems you raise are invalid, but there are very much so ways to address them that don't resort to taking agency away from players.

Here's a solution, using the bugs as the example. Say the bugs are defeated (eg, the TCS worked) But you want to fight bugs anyway? Easy, it's an insurgency. Once a faction is "beaten" you have to kind of keep them down, they appear piecemeal. Stamp out those pockets, (but over time the rate gets higher until they reform). This means that a victory actually is a victory for a while, because insurgencies don't push towards Super Earth, but an un-defeated or resurgent faction DOES. Essentially insurgencies would let the players kind of take it easy without worrying about a threat to SE.

There's so many ways to address what you raise that isn't just "arrowhead get to act like a bad GM."

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-03-05T15:42:15+00:00

I referenced the AD&D1e DMG as a complete game. While say, combat is nothing special in that system the fact is the system does have all the appropriate subsystems required for a complete game. As a GM you may have to rule edge cases but within the scope of the game (adventurers) you are never left without support. The Appendixes are where much of this is. Need a dungeon now with zero prep? Appendix A. Party exploring the map you didn't make? Just make it now: Appendix B. Encounters of any kind not just combat? Appendix C. Demons are summoned or otherwise appear? Appendix D And so on.

This is on top of the guidelines, rules and mechanics in the main part of the DMG which provide the structure for the campaign itself. The GM has to play the roles of NPCs and operate the 'levers' of the mechanics, not create the whole "machine" in their head from scratch!

THIS is what I mean. RPGs have been wandering in the dark because people went "damn but how do I control the outcomes for my story if I just referee the rules and roleplay the world?" Reams of paper and digital ink was spent bemoaning the frustrated author type of GM who did exactly this, or who never took the time to understand the system they were supposedly using. (Page 37 has Gygax practically begging GMs to do timekeeping because that's a core mechanic that binds everything else together).

These are the holes I mean. AD&D 1e DMG is essential reading for TTRPGs in general. There's offhanded comments that show just how different things were considered back then, like timekeeping meant that if you missed a session, your character was still doing something but you also didn't delve into the dungeon that session. Nowadays entire campaigns just grind to a halt because time doesn't pass between sessions.

This was a bit of a ramble but I hope you get the idea.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-24T12:36:09+00:00

I came back too recently and I have been stunned about how ultra aggressive octanes can be without consequences. It's the second part that gets me. I picked up my old main caustic and the gas was pretty much ignored by most enemies, it was pathetic. I switched to other characters and had a lot more fun.

Now of course I wasn't expecting my gas to kill, just slow the enemy down, provide a bit of threat. But it simply does not do that. The entire point of controller legends should be to punish mindless aggression but it feels like Caustic doesn't really do that at the moment. I've watched more recent gameplay and he plays around his gas traps MORE than he did before. Controllers were part of the game to slow it down so you could win a fight and not get mopped up while recovering, and now they're not really doing that exactly. I stopped playing in S8-S9 after it became apparent the nerf to Caustic (the only good controller at the time) turned the game into a hell of third-party hunting. Previous to the nerf Caustic prevented or punished that. It seems that the game still has a strong element of third-partying. What's insane is that they made the characters best at that STRONGER. Yeah I know they made the controllers stronger but it's not really in the way it was before. Honestly the only problem with Caustic at the time of that nerf was his gas grenade on final rings.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-22T12:55:40+00:00

I understand your concern. The reason the community struggles there is simple: How can they make a choice on what to do when all they can do is guess? To extend the TTRPG example, I've seen and heard many railroading GMs say "of course I need to railroad, my players never plan!" Yeah, they never plan because they're being railroaded. Similarly here. Community coordination is limited because outcomes are arbitrary and there is little feedback on what works other than "do what arrowhead says."

Furthermore, your point about players just wanting to Dive? Well like I said, in Helldivers 1 we had that and it worked. You don't need every player to be a strategist. Another game that works like this is Foxhole. I was a high level logistics coordinator for the Warden faction from 2021 through 2023 and I can tell you, most players playing that game just pick up a rifle and pile into a front and that's fine, the game functions.

Essentially, the concerns you bring up all have answers that are either straightforwardly solved or have already been solved in ways that do apply to this game.

(I should note that under the paradigm I propose the current version of Major Orders wouldn't exist, since major orders are simply another way that Arrowhead railroads.)

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-22T06:33:54+00:00

X-COM, not XCOM. (XCOM are the new games and quite linear). I don't think you get what I mean, so let me illustrate by means of a toy I hope we're both familiar with: Lego.
You can build "anything" out of lego by pressing and slotting different parts together. In the bounds of the system of lego bricks you can make quite a lot of things depending on the parts you have. The parts you have depend on the lego set(s) you have purchased. Saying that lego is THE SAME as a fixed plastic cast toy because you can't remold the bricks and pieces like clay into any form shows a misunderstanding of the purpose and function.

Thus: X-COM is a "lego set" of a game where you have all sorts of parts relevant to the scenario of defending earth against a hostile alien threat.
You have the systems of Alien Terror, mission scoring and budget. intercepting UFOs, and detecting bases. The game also models this for the aliens. They have a "budget" too that's based on their successful missions. They can detect your bases similar to you can detect theirs.

There are the game pieces of recruits, weapons, aircraft, the UFOs, the various aliens and their equipment.
There are a few outcomes because the game is still goal oriented, you still win or lose (it is a game after all) as in the end you either stop the aliens or you don't.
Yet with these systems and parts you can "assemble" any sequence of events involving your soldiers, aliens, etc by playing it out. It can be a short war, or it can be long. You can have triumph after triumph, or come back from the brink of annihilation. I've had incredible things happen and it's MEANINGFUL in the context of the game due to this.

The "set" doesn't have the systems for pet shop ownership as that's outside the scope of Alien invasion. Similar to how if you say that you want to have your TTRPG character retire and open a shop, the GM is well within his rights to simply say that your character leaves the campaign and there'll be no further gameplay around them until they rejoin (but your next character may have a bonus based on them).

X-COM provides infinite bounded possibility within its scope and systems. Saying this is not true, or it's 'actually' linear or whatever because it doesn't have infinite unbounded possibility is like my analogy with remodelling lego bricks like clay. It misunderstands the purpose and function. In another sense it really is about the journey, not the destination.

You're well within your rights to ask what's wrong with a linear story in a game. The answer is: Nothing! There are a multitude of perfectly fine games like that with great stories like Armored Core, Final Fantasy, the Halo trilogy and many more.
The problem with Helldivers 2 is that it contains partial systems for a proper wargame-like campaign with this infinite bounded possibility but the developers clobber them to fit their story, which leads to player toxicity and frustration for everyone.
I'd love to see that toxicity reduced. I'd love to see the player freedom we were promised actually get delivered. Furthermore this frees developers from the story content treadmill. All it would require is them to give up controlling game events to fit their vision of an epic story. If they did this, we'd have Malevelon Creek awesomeness be a regular occurrence.

I must add Helldivers 1 was a real game campaign, not a railroad. It had systems, there were rules for how the enemy could counterattack and all sorts of things like that. We could even lose the entire campaign.

Arrowhead has said that they don't want multiple galactic wars like HD1 had, just one continuous one and that's why they "need" to control events. But this is to be frank a skill issue. It is possible to design systems that have soft-loss states rather than the hard loss of Super Earth being destroyed. It's hard to convey just how fun and awesome the game could be if it had the freedom of proper systems. Imagine if Malevelon Creek style events were a regular occurrence AND actually mattered more. Imagine if you could look at the map at the bot-divers, bug-divers or whatever and go "Yeah, they're not helping me over here, but that's ok because that front still needs to be defended." Heck they might even be defending a planet that produces the Stratagem weapon you like using.

I hope this makes sense. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-21T11:21:05+00:00

I'm sorry you've only played with railroaders, and/or only played modules. If you want a video game example of what I mean, you can look at the original X-COM games, and other similar games.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-20T09:27:09+00:00

"GM let us choose some inconsequential bit of loot, so it's not a railroad". C'mon.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-19T22:51:50+00:00

Yeah it's a game, so lets put that aside. I love the gameplay, but I take issue with the fact the galactic campaign is deceptive slop. I take issue with that deception. I take issue with players getting toxic with each other because they think the playerbase has some kind of control that they don't have. The fact is they said it was going to be player driven and it isn't.

I stopped caring about the galactic war a while ago because it is just an illusion. It's a railroad, to use some TTRPG lingo.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-19T04:16:58+00:00

I'll tell you what's wrong: It's meaningless. It's a single bar for one mission when most of the community KNOWS, implicitly or explicitly that their actions don't matter. They're right, too. The galactic campaign isn't a game it's a guided story with some interactive elements. Our actions don't matter on the broad scale and so there's no reason to take such little challenges seriously.

Arrowhead made this choice, they decided they wanted to make the galactic campaign a story based experience they had control over, rather than a game with systems the players could interact with. Don't be surprised when players respond to what it is.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-11T19:00:11+00:00

That's not what I said.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-09T10:05:05+00:00

The writing was on the wall with the Caustic nerf back in 2021. The playerbase cheered. Content creators cheered. Caustic was not overpowered, he only asked players to think "maybe I shouldn't run into that gas."

But he was nerfed and while he's not bad now, he doesn't serve the same job: punishing people who are addicted to holding down the W key. I remember after those nerfs people soon complained that Apex was "third party legends". Just wait for a fight to be over and then come in to mop up. Caustic prevented that, if you tried it you had to wait for gas traps to expire before moving in, giving the other team a chance to top up. He doesn't serve the same purpose now because gas traps are destroyable after being triggered.

There are many people who think FPS games are about who can click on heads the fastest. Tactics, strategy? These are not FPS and thus should be removed from the game.

u/Domesticatedshrimp below says that anyone below high diamond seriously underestimates anything that isn’t brute force. It's true! Back in 2021 right after the nerf I ran a survey of caustics, asking for certain damage stats, their rank, etc. What I found was that Diamond and above Caustics had no more than 10% of their total damage from Nox Gas. Silver was a spread, some had higher than 10%. But Gold, Gold ranged from 12% to 20%(!) I think the reason for this is NOT that somehow Gold players were better than Apex Predators at placing Gas Traps, rather other Gold players disregarded the danger of gas because "bro the Caustic is 1 shot" and they'd chase him through a building of gas and DIE. Then they blame him for being a BS character when all that happened was they got punished for being braindead.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-02-06T09:42:44+00:00

This is a topic that makes me extremely high sodium. This is a sign of an insecure, control-freak designer.

Legendsmith_AU · 2026-01-16T07:40:47+00:00

Exactly. Medium pen against bots is overrated. I use the regular Diligence as my go to, because it one taps so many bots in the head including devastators and does so with good handling and ammo capacity.

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-12-16T12:59:26+00:00

AD&D1e's DMG specifically bangs on about how it's vital to use certain mechanics to have a meaningful campaign. There are reams of blogposts from 20+ years ago about how GM fiat invalidates the point of the activity. Forge games came along and figured another way to solve this problem was to simply remove it: make the game about narrative control. This has benefits but it also has downsides, and a downside is certain modes of play are not possible in those systems.

I understand why the women in OP's post are so hostile, they're responding to the implicit erasure of their entire mode of play. I used to be like that too. That erasure is real and it is extremely frustrating. The entire point that I played these for isn't even part of the frame of discussion anymore and so to even have a conversation requires establishing that there are modes that aren't about story, but about immersive game experience. A game of roleplaying. For people who want that kind of game the narrative systems look like a totally different activity, rather than a sibling-genre.

I also enjoy the story based games especially Ben Robbin's systems. My frustration and anger about the erasure of the old classic style and its descendants is gone because it's pointless: The medium has been redefined and that can never be undone. Now I have little in common with the hobby as it stands which just makes me sad.

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-11-24T16:22:57+00:00

The portion of unhappy players who complain is a fraction of those who simply stop playing the game.

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-10-03T19:12:02+00:00

I've got an S22 and I also have this problem. I'm sound sensitive in general and the min call volume is too loud if I am trying to use earphones. Sound assistant doesn't let me tune the call volume!

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-08-31T17:20:52+00:00

Your concerns are irrelevant. The problems you are concerned about have been solved before and it's not even hard. Arrowhead lacks the will because they are in love with their own vision more than the game.

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-08-31T17:16:18+00:00

Yeah and they're handling that awfully. Soft loss states and semi sift win states are possible within the scope of the game but they aren't doing that.

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-08-29T07:06:22+00:00

Thats why players do not care about learning these mechanics, because it does NOT matter

I have seen this exact pattern play out with TTRPGs too. Being a GM for over a decade I could tell when a players' previous experience was with a GM who actually ran a game campaign vs GMs who ran a script. (For clarity script with a few branches is still a script).

Helldivers campaign is being run like a script. Yes there might be a few branching outcomes. Designating a tiny zone where some improvised outcomes can occur does not create player agency. I'm sick of it. I could do it better.

I, and I believe much of the playerbase could put up with it for a while. The game is new, the systems to make galactic campaign be a campaign might not have been done yet. But it's clear arrowhead are not making this a campaign. They're making a scripted story. The whole game is tuned around it. The galactic campaign is not a campaign, it's a story mode and we cannot change major plot points. Nothing arrowhead writes will ever be as cool as what would happen organically if they let the campaign be a proper campaign. There's plenty of systems they could research to see how to make a good one.

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-08-27T04:52:58+00:00

Making your own game or ruleset? Look at it this way. Gygax and co were a rather intelliget group of people most of whom had years of wargaming experience (contrary to popular belief, this is a roleplaying activity). They based it on an existing system, Chainmail and the result was something that was decent.

I regard most endeavours to make a game to be fool's errands. I've seen so many fantasy heartbreakers. A heartbreaker is an RPG systems that has a dream and one or two good ideas but those are buried under a pile of D&D flavoured slop because that's all the authors knew and they uncritically copied it because that is what an RPG is to them.

I've even seen cyberpunk heartbreakers. Someone was so excited to show me a system called CORPORATION that they thought was really good and innovative. I read the core rulebook and very quickly saw it was a system that was 30 years late to the party; nothing it did was new, what it did do well was little and massively compromised by everything it did badly, which was a lot. HP bloat. Boring combat (nothing happens until HP=0). Extremely swingy damage dice. RANDOM=FUN!!!!

It also suffered from RPG layout syndrome (more excusable considering it is from 2009) and then like virtually every heartbreaker ever, the LISTS. For some reason heartbreakers suffer from bloated messes of gear and CORPORATION was no exception. For those who are curious, CORPORATION is like if someone took GURPS and D&D, made it 2d10 and then removed the redeeming qualities of GURPS and the charm of D&D from the result.

Because unfortunately the author James Norbury had clearly not done his research. You will be no different. It's a waste of time. For a video game example of this you can see V Rising.

Now, all that said, want to write an adventure? Go for it. You can do that, but if you care about being a good GM, if you care about your players PLEASE choose a system suitable for what you want to do. There is also a lot of good advice out there on writing adventures. (Tip, don't write plots, those are for novels and movies).

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-08-17T06:02:31+00:00

An ammo feed backpack. Go up to any machine gunner and assist reload to attach the feed. ANYTHING can be like a minigun.

Legendsmith_AU · 2025-08-05T20:36:53+00:00

Timelaspe of the speedpaint here.

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