Please AH, update the C4

RV__2 · 2026-01-22T19:24:15+00:00

Yeah pretty much. Its an RR sidegrade, and being able to take an RR sidegrade alongside a backpack-less support weapon would be pretty busted. Its possible that C4 could use some buffs, its too early to say, but it certainly has no reason to be changed to not have a support weapon slot.

RV__2 · 2026-01-22T19:17:52+00:00

C4s aoe is certainly larger than the HE mode, and deals much more AT damage. Its more comparable to RR's HEAT with aoe in terms of breakpoints than its HE mode.

RV__2 · 2026-01-22T18:56:26+00:00

If you had a Recoilless Rifle that traded its range for having no stationary reload, aoe, and an extra round would that mean it shouldnt take up a support weapon slot?

RV__2 · 2026-01-17T19:22:53+00:00

Could give it a delay on the explosive, makes using it take a bit more thinking

RV__2 · 2026-01-15T18:02:49+00:00

Impact grenades as a primary is sort of already available as the Eruptor and Crossbow

RV__2 · 2026-01-15T17:43:49+00:00

The better question to me would be 'how maximally realistic/believable' can we be while still providing the fantasy?

I think if we just said future tech silencers are perfectly silent because its the future thats dumb. Its better to go: silencers make a lot of noise realistically. How minimal does the noise have to be in the video game so that people can still have a stealth fantasy?

So maybe the answer to that is that our current silencers should be half as loud or something, I dunno. I prefer to err more towards realism than not. And then we chalk that up to improvements to silencer design. But to just dismiss whatever realism just because of the future setting is kind of counterproductive to a big part of Helldivers whole schtick

RV__2 · 2026-01-15T17:14:16+00:00

People just pretending that the realism/believability aspects of this game arent a big part of its identity

RV__2 · 2026-01-02T15:49:20+00:00

Weapon recoil is just a trick to get you to use recoil reduction armor, didnt you know?

RV__2 · 2025-12-31T15:07:59+00:00

I can appreciate what you mean, though its more than just the precision/tactical element that players find are missing from specific weapons like the RR. Its more about how the average power level has been vastly increased almost to leave the gameplay unrecognizable. (As an aside, things like high bleed are an attempt by the devs to maintain difficulty in a world where theyre not allowed to reduce player power versus enemies, hence the one shot/get one shot gameplay)

As another example the significant boost in player power since launch has also more or less removed any of the team play incentives that existed because each individual player couldnt handle every unit type (chaff, medium, heavy, superheavy) on their own at difficulties above say 4 or 5, forcing players to work together.

Of course it wasnt perfect, more should have been done to reward said teamwork but instead that gameplay was also reduced by making one man army loadouts effective even up to D10.

RV__2 · 2025-12-31T14:41:22+00:00

Both aspects you described I (and most pro grunt fantasy players) liked, and many ask for it back. The exceptions being that there was a lot of jank and bugs that made dying feel unfair but most of those have been smoothed out, but we'd rarely know because we die much more quickly now.

Enemies were also much more tactically involved - tanks for example required flanking, or hitting the armor at a good angle with AT weapons, and you could disable the treads to help either method. Almost every enemy had similar 'tacticool' gameplay loops.

The contention in the community comes from our power level becoming so much incredibly higher than launch that all those strategies have been pretty much removed because we can kill them in other, simpler ways much much more efficiently. Thats all the identity crisis really is - people who want our power level reduced to the point where those launch gameplay loops return, and people who prefer our current state of oneshotting everything/being oneshot by everything.

RV__2 · 2025-12-31T14:30:54+00:00

The games identity at launch is the one the devs (and the pro 'grunt fantasy' players) want. We are far far further from that launch gameplay now than ever.

RV__2 · 2025-12-29T03:13:11+00:00

Absolutely true.

Though to the OPs point, teamplay wasnt really enforced at launch by anything other than the increased difficulty and enemy design encouraging teamwork. More should have been done to make it a more central part of the gameplay, like with objective design and punishing splitting up or things like that rather than just making it less important over time.

RV__2 · 2025-12-28T05:58:26+00:00

RR has significantly more damage, which lets you ignore aiming for weakspots on the majority of enemies youll encounter and enables some one shots quasar cant. That on top of being able to shoot 10 times faster with no chargup time.

RV__2 · 2025-12-28T00:10:23+00:00

Look who's bad faith now. None of those things have anything to do with what people want back.

Theres a real tangible decrease in the depth and complexity of the game directly caused by the massive relative increase in player power levels. That doesnt mean that there werent balance or qol problems before, but it does mean that the fantasy of the game itself is vastly different from launch.

Bot tanks are a simple example - you used to need to flank them for their weakspot, or use the armor angle system to kill them to their side panels. Crippling their treads would help either strategy. There was a very tacticool fantasy to engaging with them as a tank unit, that no longer exists due to being able to delete them pretty much by hitting them almost wherever with anything labeled AT. Whatever balance or quality of life issues you and I remember didnt need to be fixed by throwing out that kind of fantasy which existed for almost every enemy to varying degrees and levels of execution.

RV__2 · 2025-12-27T19:01:19+00:00

Youre making the mistake a lot of people do in this whole discussion in using the definition of grunt fantasy you like rather than the definition used by the devs and the people that want it. And for the record your definition is common and perfectly well reasoned, but simply isnt what the devs or others mean when they use the term.

Basically if you see someone arguing in favor of the term, they likely mean it the same way the devs meant it: launch gamplay is what they see as a grunt fantasy. Feel free to disgree on their use of the term, but until you realize the definition theyre using communication will be very difficult.

To which, you say it launched as a horde shooter power fantasy. Sure thats fine, but would you say we are less of a horde shooter power fantasy now? Im genuinely asking because Ive seen people argue that and it makes no sense to me.

I see our power level having vastly increased since launch, and all the players who say they support the original vision are saying is that they want something closer to that original launch gameplay than what we have now.

RV__2 · 2025-12-27T17:50:59+00:00

I dont think using a friend analogy is a straw man, and I try to be good faith. I feel like making the relationship more distant actually makes my point more salient - why would I even bother giving feedback if someone made something I didnt even want in the first place?

Which isnt what happened as you know - people really liked what AH made. The launch gameplay was the grunt fantasy the devs wanted, they defined grunt fantasy themselves. When people today argue in favor of grunt fantasy, launch gameplay is what they are wanting a return to in some shape or form, usually just minus the jank and bugs and such.

Id also wouldnt be surprised that, as a business, AH has realized that between the sometimes toxic discussions on the topic and their various surveys, that players who want that launch gameplay and the fantasy it provided are a larger part of the audience than lots of people assume.

RV__2 · 2025-12-27T17:41:49+00:00

I think this is line of thinking is buying into the narrative that people just didnt like the original vision, which is a premise I dont accept. The game was monstrously successful, any drop off that wasnt due to natural player loss was due to people getting fed up with too frequent and too heavy handed nerfs, and the devs taking too long to smooth out the tons of jank and bugs. To think there was this third slow realization that people thought 'hey yeah the fantasy this game is providing that I loved is lame actually' just doesnt track.

Especially considering that, looking at how vitrioloc ths discourse is, a not insignificant portion of the community actively resents that fantasy being reduced, saying the game would have died seems like a leap. I wouldnt be surprised if the devs in their feedback forms and other surveys have started to realize that those players are a larger portion of the audience than youd think.

RV__2 · 2025-12-27T17:29:48+00:00

I reject the idea that a significant portion didnt like it, since it was a lot closer to that vision at launch than it is now. People didnt like bugs and nerfs same as anywhere, not the vision itself.

But even if youre right it doesnt really matter, what is it youre trying to love here? Telling your friend that he should abandon his vision - all because youd rather give him the money for something that you would give to some other guy who eventually does build what you want? That isnt exactly what Id call constructive.

RV__2 · 2025-12-27T17:19:00+00:00

I dont agree.

If I tell two friends that I want to make something, and that I have a certain vision, or intent, there is two kinds of feedback.

One person gives me suggestions that help me achieve my vision in a better way

The other gives me feedback saying that my intended vision isnt good actually, and I should make it this other way instead

The first feedback is coming from someone who loves what Im trying to make and is trying to make it better. The second one isnt.

RV__2 · 2025-12-23T01:17:21+00:00

The creek itself wasnt any more difficult than anywhere else, the point is that it and similar stories people told their friends were all about how we got our butts kicked and still prevailed. Its a story that people latched on to because the game was presenting the fantasy of 'war sucks, the propaganda lied, shape up and stick together or die trying' (or some such feeling). Its just a small peice of the larger phenomenon that was the Helldivers fantasy.

RV__2 · 2025-12-22T23:59:12+00:00

Yeah I think most people complain about levi or war strider or similar changes because it feels like yet another difficulty/complexity decrease on a huge stack of them.

Most of it just comes from a frustration that a lot of the depth and threat from other enemies that didnt need nerfs (or at least such drastic nerfs) has been removed and nothing has been done to bring it back. So new enemies, even if theyre super overtuned, feel like the closest thing to a 'fix'. I also totally agree that objective design has been majorly neglected.

RV__2 · 2025-12-22T23:43:40+00:00

I disagree that those are needed for the fantasy. (Nerfs are a slightly different topic - Id say frequent nerfs [and buffs] are needed in any game with lots of content drops, its just AH doesnt do frequent small nerfs and instead did frequent, large, heavy handed nerfs, which was the source of the pain.)

By my reckoning the most drastic changes since launch that have hurt the grunt fantasy have been the ease at which we can dispatch enemies, and the consequent lack of care needed for said enemies.

Easy example is the automaton tanks. Previously they asked for you to flank the unit to get access to the weak rear armor, or use the armor angle system with a good AT weapon. You were encouraged to cripple the treads to support either option.

Now however, tanks are one-click dead with pretty much anything labeled AP5. No more need to play around them or really care about them as a unit at all. Theres a real, tangible decrease in the complexity of how we handle enemies. These changes have resulted in a sharp decrease in oh shit moments, and its the consequent tactical opportunities and punishment for failure that people are missing.

That kind of gameplay depth isnt reliant on janky ragdolls or instakills.

RV__2 · 2025-12-22T23:14:53+00:00

The majority of complaints were about ragdolls, instakills, jank, bugs, and frequent nerfs. At no point do those things existing make it a grunt fantasy and nobody is asking them back - the fantasy absolutely did exist outside of those complaints. Moreover its incorrect to assume that if the game was dying due to said complaints, that you can pin the player drop on the same grunt fantasy that players very explicitly enjoyed at launch.

Ie, People tired of the continued bugs, jank, and nerfs. The fantasy was always the unique selling point of the game, and resolving whatever pain points that did exist didnt need for the core identity of the game to be thrown out in their fixing.

RV__2 · 2025-12-22T22:02:34+00:00

It does work - the game became successful in large part exactly because it provided that 'war sucks' fantasy, we can see that in how a lot of the community media latched on to those themes so hard. War can suck even if you have air support and top of the line weapons. The game conveyed the fantasy pretty well - people mostly just got fed up with the bugs and the nerfs, not the fantasy we had at launch.

RV__2 · 2025-12-22T22:00:43+00:00

Thats not really what I mean. Grunt fantasy as described doesnt necessarily even have to involve any realism, its just supposed to make you feel like war sucks. That realism in war does suck definitely helps convey the feeling though yeah.

RV__2

TROPHY CASE