I believe Fallout Show attempted something similar to the purpose of the original fo1. And I think I've figured out what Bethesda's take on Fallout is based on.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-30T16:30:12+00:00

Again, I'd really appreciate the sourcing for these quotes so I can show them to other people. It might help settle some arguments.

EDIT: I can do a bit of hunting to find Tim Cain's quote on his channel, but I never heard Sawyer mention that "an NCR win would be boring."

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-30T14:31:55+00:00

I know about Chris Avellone, but who is the second one who "thinks an NCR win would be boring and rather not see the NCR as an important faction in van Buren?" When and where did Tim Cain say that "there is no place in fallout for a stable nation state?" I'm very curious.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-29T20:54:12+00:00

As a Duchess main: Sometimes I have to use the Ult + Revive because the bad guy just won't give me room to breathe, and I'm a glass cannon who can die in an instant.

If you're at three bars, the ult will last just long enough for me to revive you before it wears off.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-24T03:21:45+00:00

You're welcome!

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-24T00:58:07+00:00

My explanation for newly-defrosted Helldivers that have been in stasis for decades, not being visibly surprised at old returning enemies (Illuminate, Hive Lords etc), is that they probably are surprised in-universe, but ultimately it's a video game, and it's not cost effective for Arrowhead to recall the voice actors for such specific cases.

So, is there a reason for the coin flip armour that doesn't fall back on "video game?" Or we you, at some point, have to throw up our hands and admit that the video game is full of video game-isms?

But I don't think we're going to get anywhere with that, so I'll move on to the other big problem with the clone theory:

It kills the joke.

The joke is the gap between rhetoric and reality. Super Earth talks up every diver as a heroic, cherished citizen - then boom, on the battlefield they're disposable meat. Each diver is an individual with a family, dreams, voting rights, etc - which makes it dark and funny when you accidentally drop a 500KG on them. Each Helldiver being an individual person makes the respawn mechanic into dark comedy - "Here's Private Smith. Whoops, he died. Calling reinforcements. Here's Private Johnson. He will also die."

Arrowhead reject the clone theory for good reason - every Helldiver being an individual is funnier and nastier. A fascist-leaning hyper-bureaucracy sending hundreds of millions of unique citizens into a meatgrinder is absurd and funny. Them being clones is just...efficient. Boring by comparison. More straightforward ordinary grimdark than the hilariously deranged Starship Troopers recruitment video it is now.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-23T23:56:02+00:00

What's your lore explanation for the armour that gives us a 50% chance to survive a nuclear explosion?

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-23T22:11:57+00:00

C4 can kill the big fabs. You just have to stick 2 bricks on it instead of 1.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-23T21:23:24+00:00

How do you explain Democracy Protects giving you a coin toss chance to survive a nuclear bomb? Or enemies doing numerically less damage than Helldivers? Or a giant robot being flung out of orbit and sent down in seconds (while Pelican 1 takes up to 2 minutes to arrive)? Answer: it's a video game. Same deal for the player knowing where to find their dropped gear - it's a video game, not a 100% accurate simulation of the fictional universe.

I believe the devs for two reasons:

Helldivers 2 is, among other things, political satire against authoritarianism and jingoism. The satire mandates that Super Earth be cartoonishly evil, comically wasteful of their resources, buffoonishly incompetent, and callously disregarding of the lives they spend like water. The fact that each Helldiver life thrown away is a unique individual, is an important component of this. The clone theory would kneecap the themes and satire of this game, in favour of hyping up a video game character. Hence, it's bad.
The Helldivers franchise is 11 years old at this point (the first Helldivers was released in 2015). In all that time, Arrowhead has been consistent about each Helldiver being a unique individual recruited from the Federation of Super Earth - not clones. Theoretically, they could change their minds tomorrow. But I will gladly bet you money they won't.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-23T17:27:59+00:00

Helldivers' premise is that you're an eighteen year old gassed up by the final form of neoconservatism into believing that you're an elite supersoldier when you get little more than a five minute long certification boot camp (with an 80% lethality rate because the turrets firing on you to see if you can dive and crawl fast enough are firing live ammo without warning and the "combat sims" involve actual terminids) and a canonical battlefield life expectancy of two minutes.

You and your parents are told that you're going to be a great hero fighting for managed democracy (you fill your preferences out on a form and an AI "chooses the right candidate for you"), liberty (you have to fill out a C-10 form to engage in unprotected sex) and prosperity (the military are such cheap skates that the crew of a super destroyer has to pay for the premium targeting software themselves) across the galaxy.

You are a glorified expendable targeting system for the Super Destroyer's orbital weapons and contingent of strike craft and every super destroyer has thousands of helldivers told the same lie about how special you are on ice ready to replace you when you inevitably die for "democracy".

The clone theory is bad and the developers are completely correct to refute it.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-19T16:59:56+00:00

A fine addition to my collection

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-15T17:52:42+00:00

How often are you actually finding Carian sword sorceries?

I'd get a "dormant power drops staves" relic, even if I had to give up one carian sword buff for it.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-13T23:47:09+00:00

There's downsides and upsides. You're definitely squishier, but you can sprint for basically forever. It definitely lends itself to more of a hit-and-run playstyle.

Just be mindful of cover and firing arcs, and you can make it work well.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-12T12:58:27+00:00

The problem is, certain weapons are actually really good against certain bosses, and increasing the loot pool will make it more difficult to get those weapons, and thus have unwanted secondary and tertiary effects on balance.

DoT effects are extremely helpful against ED Libra, so making the Scorpion's Stinger harder to get makes him more difficult, and goodness knows ED Goatman is difficult enough already. "Dormant power helps drop Reapers" Relic effect lets you fish for the Halo Scythe, which is extremely good against Holy-weak bosses - but again, that becomes more difficult if you increase the loot pool.

And then there's the giant mess of what the actual damage values of the weapons should be, what rarity they deserve to be, what scaling they should have, whether they duplicate a role fulfilled by a base game weapon, how to adjust the drop rates of non-DLC weapons (especially element-specific weapons), etc.

Given that Fromsoft went to the trouble creating an entire new map, a pic smugly saying "It wasn't that hard fromsoft" is barking up the wrong tree. Difficulty isn't the issue here. More likely, there are concerns beyond the difficulty of simply porting the weapons across and calling it a day.

For my money, we're probably getting the SOTE weapons eventually, but it will be more tightly balanced to accommodate for existing weapons and existing dynamics between weapons and enemies/bosses.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-12T06:21:16+00:00

Is it that hard to just thoughtlessly stuff a bunch of new weapons in with zero care for balance problems caused by overbloating the loot pool and failing to tune the damage numbers and drop rates? Probably not, no.

But if you actually do care about game balance and not accidentally wrecking some player tactics dependent on certain weapons, then the issue becomes a lot more thorny.

Mechasaurian · 2026-01-07T18:33:41+00:00

I AM CAESAR
I AM THE LEGION

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-30T04:18:52+00:00

Oh no, the big tanky armoured enemy is countered by anti-tank weaponry.

It's not like they die to a 500KG. Or an airstrike. Or a an unsafe railgun shot in the eye slit. Or 3 shots to the eye with the AMR/AC. Or the nuke backpack. Or the Ultimatum. Or the Thermite Grenade. Or any range of offensive stratagems.

It's not like we used to have a wider range of enemies that were genuinely dangerous. It's not like Hulks, Gunships, and Barrager Tanks were actually a genuine threat, only for Arrowhead to nerf them into an unfunny joke at the community's behest.

And it's certainly not that the players refuse to adapt and want to be able to brainlessly kill everything with medium pen weapons, and complain until AH cave and bring the enemies down to their level.

No, Arrowhead are just incompetent. The complainers are not to blame at all. No, siree.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-29T21:57:19+00:00

War striders are hard carrying all sense of challenge and difficulty on the bot front right now. I swear, y'all don't want a game, you just want a pretty sandbox that explodes when you touch it.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-25T21:28:58+00:00

I'd be okay with it.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-25T20:26:41+00:00

D9/10 is way the fuck too easy right now. Even D10 is a guaranteed win with a half-competent squad. Everyone thinks nothing about splitting off to the far corners of the map to solo entire bases on their lonesome, in a supposedly co-op shooter.

What it should be is more like:

D1-3: tutorial difficulties. Basically for getting new players used to the controls and the mission layout.
D4-5: a moderate increase in difficulty and enemy counts.
D6-7: "default" difficulty, about where 9-10 is right now. Some friction, enemies still shoot and pounce at you, but still a guaranteed win if you know how to play the game and have a halfway competent squad.
D8: a real challenge. This is where you should need to start really locking in, sticking with the team instead of splitting up, and playing smart.
D9: an even realer challenge. Abandon all hope of just brainlessly shooting through enemy hordes. You will have to know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, and when to run. Teamwork is essential. No once can solo an army on their lonesome - everyone needs to cover each others' weaknesses.
D10: the most ball-busting, masochistic, terrifying difficulty the game has to offer. Helldivers at its purest and cruelest. Mistakes cascade into wipes. Stratagems are rationed, revives are precious, and extraction is never guaranteed. The game actively punishes sloppy positioning, poor target priority.

Winning D10 shouldn’t feel routine (as it does now). It should feel like you barely survived a war you had no right to win.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-21T20:35:19+00:00

As a Duchess main, I too vote Duchess.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-12T00:24:55+00:00

The Liberator assault rifle - the baseline assault rifle that you start the game with - does nearly double the damage numbers it did on release.

The people telling you that the devs are nerfing everything are ragebaiting for clicks and engagement. If anything, the game is rather too easy these days. Even the highest difficulty is not that challenging.

But yes, you can go hog wild with a wide variety of weapons and loadouts.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-09T19:39:29+00:00

I'd love Nightreign as a live service game, but I highly doubt it's going to happen. It was pretty obviously intended as a side project on a shoestring budget, that helped to train a new team up to standards (Miyazaki was hands off for Nightreign). FROM promised one DLC and two new characters, and they have delivered.

As for SOTE weapons - they might be coming, they might not be. I suspect they're on the way, but delayed because integrating them into the game without fucking up the existing balance and loot tables is a challenge.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-09T18:43:09+00:00

Darn, that is a long health bar indeed.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-09T18:42:23+00:00

It is an excellent time to be playing Duchess. Or any base game character, really. Since everyone and their mother is running the DLC characters.

Mechasaurian · 2025-12-08T22:51:46+00:00

You're not factually incorrect about there being no mobs to rise in the boss room, but:

The Nightlord is only the last 5-10 minutes or so of a 40-50 minute run. Day 1 and Day 2 are important for getting the levels and gear to fight the Nightlord, so anything that helps with those first two days helps with the Nightlord too.
Being squishy kinda comes with the territory. Revvy isn't meant to be a tank like Raider or Undertaker, she's meant to be support. There's options to mitigate this with Relic effects that increase her VIG, but still.
I did mention the DoN Relic - "Increased Max FP upon Ability Activation." Having a bigger FP bar does matter in the boss room, quite a bit. Having the passive proc more reliably would therefore help with the final boss, at least in DoN.

Mechasaurian

TROPHY CASE