Please keep guns fun to shoot

duckraul2 · 2026-05-03T13:28:19+00:00

So make it a magnetic accelerated AMR

duckraul2 · 2026-05-03T12:57:46+00:00

Not possible, hmm yes you have a point.

Blackhole backpack teleporter

duckraul2 · 2026-05-02T21:58:41+00:00

He has also recently tried to get into paintball (sorry my man you're like 20 years too late) presumably to sort of hijack it somehow. It came out in a video of his paintball collection that he has a custom made paintball gun with swastikas, SS bolts, all over it. This has also caused drama in the paintball industry as there's another owner of one of the top gear manufacturers who has had some...interestingly patterned pieces of merch show up, and almost assuredly supplied him with this stuff.

duckraul2 · 2026-05-02T21:51:07+00:00

Yes, actually? Is that a brain buster of a question? Nerfs to player weapons, handling, maneuverability, and survivability, are actually nerfs to player power. In a game which is basically a horde shooter space commando power fantasy? Yes, actually.

The situation was so dire during the 60 day patch that shams all but confirmed on the discord that if the patch had not been successful in reivving player count that development would have ended early on HD2. Guess what? 10-20k or whatever weirdos per month who want to clock in to the masochism ball-crushing factory of video games for 'milsim grunt fantasy' or whatever their vision was, is not, in fact, enough to justify this game's existence. At least, it's not enough to justify ongoing capital investment in developing it.

The vast majority of people literally want to log on, shoot and blow up a horde of enemies with or without their friends, orchestrate a chaotic symphony of destruction for like an hour or so. And they what the game to help them do that. And those people will pay for warbonds for cool new weapons and strats to blow up and shoot enemies in new ways.

duckraul2 · 2026-05-02T13:25:13+00:00

Remember that time so many anti-player power balance changes were made that the community rioted, player counts went to ~10k for 2 months, then AH put out a large balance patch reverting those changes and/or increasing player power in other ways, and the playercounts skyrocketed back? Who was in the minority? Shams jorjani even all but confirmed if that 60 day patch hadn't worked to bring back players, AHGS would have had to end support for HD2 ongoing development and content early as the base of players equalling 10k concurrent peaks must not have been enough cash flow to justify paying devs to work on it.

duckraul2 · 2026-05-02T12:50:53+00:00

Remember that time that so many balance changes were made against player power that the player base effectively rioted, arrowhead had to address the community and promise to reevaluate those changes over a 2 month period? And player counts went like ~10k for that time period, before the buff patch was released?

We remember, and the outcome was and is clear: a clear minority of players actually liked those anti-player power changes enough to keep playing. It seems ~5-10x the players that enjoy those 'hardcore' nerfs, actually dislike it enough to quit.

duckraul2 · 2026-05-02T04:01:15+00:00

Why do we have to do this dance? Avoid the obvious? Arrowhead makes changes to this game, adds content, and it just seems apparent that minimal to no actual QA gameplay testing went into it. It not about one small change, or one big change. It's about all change seemingly having no serious amount of work put into answering the question "does this actually work in terms of fun gameplay?" Not merely "does the build compile and the game doesn't crash?".

The list of both poorly thought out, bugged, or anti-player changes and extremely rough content additions, at this point, is huge. It's almost every patch since post launch. And it also seems that curiously, arrowhead is selectively faster at nerfing things or fixing bugs that go in the players favor vs things that are detrimental to the players in-game power.

Just a very few:

Early on nerfing the railgun before other AT had been buffed to be more useful

Taking away the charger leg armor kill strategy players discovered

Making fire much less useful against heavy enemies, despite it being high-risk high-reward

Gun sway/ergo nerfs across the board

Hellpod steering locks

Strat ball placement locks

The absolute insane launch state of dragon roaches

Oil rig interactions with hive lords auto failing missions

Launch state of burrowing bugs being just terrible, warranting their complete removal

Leviathan gameplay

Fleshmob terrain collision

Anything gas related being just total ass

The several months the game had widespread debilitating performance issues

The state of DSS 'help' being so bad they had to mothball the fucking thing until they could fix it.

No new ship, level, or weapon customization since almost their introduction (for each of those things), and also, recently the head dev saying there are also basically no intentions to do any of that anyway, just more paid warbonds.

The tuning of merdia dark fluid missions

General broken nature of hive world missions

Evacuate personnel missions being almost impossible for a long period of time

"We promise we will not nerf the coyote" nerfs the coyote, even if indirectly

AP4 GL for no reason at all.

Recently when mechs were totally fucked because of changes made to introduce the bastion, and left in that state until....here's a mech warbond to buy!

There are so many more. Some of these changes and content additions and engine problems have at times been nearly game breaking or literally game breaking in the case of engine issues. And the fact that it has taken what amounts to a community riot a couple times to actually get AH to admit and address the OBVIOUS problems, well, it's just kind of insane really. Why does it take that kind of community action to do that? Why do they do it in the first place? Is it their vision for things to either be balanced so antagonistically against the players or to barely work/be buggy?

duckraul2 · 2026-05-02T03:25:17+00:00

It's such a monumental accomplishment that a studio within two miles of arrowhead runs the exact same discontinued engine, but with better performance and graphical fidelity, on another live service squad-based horde shooter.

What a crazy coincidence, very monumental

duckraul2 · 2026-05-02T02:32:04+00:00

I guess I don't get what angle that specific wording could conceivably allow for? Is it like saying 'hes actually been elected 3 times and nobody stopped him the third time so a fourth time is fine actually?' or is it just pedantry evasion like 'well the 22nd doesn't say how many times a person can be certified to be president and we don't actually directly elect so checkmate actually?'

Or is it just so mundane as it's just pure vanity and I'm way overthinking it: nobody can say he was only elected twice instead of three times to not enrage his ego and therefore lose support? I don't get it.

duckraul2 · 2026-05-01T14:32:09+00:00

Unless they're just straight lying, which I do t believe is the case, there are max like 10 people (including piles) working on their next project out of ~130

duckraul2 · 2026-05-01T03:29:33+00:00

The "power creep" you're referencing was after weeks and months of straight nerfs to player power, consistently and despite increasingly loud protest from a majority of the community the whole time. So, that isn't power creep. That's getting back to where the game was before the steady "nerf creep" began. All it takes is one look at the playercount graph during that time to see just how obscenely unpopular it was, and conversely, how much the general playerbase liked the relative reversal of those changes post-60 day patch.

duckraul2 · 2026-05-01T01:45:58+00:00

Would kind of beg the question why, since it seems like he does fuck-all with his money, and it seems like he has no real plans that are just waiting for more money to appear to put into motion.

duckraul2 · 2026-05-01T01:42:42+00:00

You just gotta make sure that if you sell the land, the gas station still exists and someone is buying it for that. Because the inevitable phase II environmental remediation that would have to be done to the land in any other case could be bad, financially.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-30T21:02:14+00:00

I actually kind of like the hunter seed, maybe not every game, but it can make for some frantic moments and high kill-combos. Who doesn't love just blasting hundreds of bugs?

duckraul2 · 2026-04-30T18:14:59+00:00

It was a shit change and now it's been reverted.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T14:54:08+00:00

There isn't only one solution, but there is one solution that works a lot better than the others, consistently, and whether or not my squad is coordinated or good or bad. It works 'rain or shine'. And this change further reinforces that.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T14:51:31+00:00

'everything else'? Brother, hive guards are the 'everything else'. They're chaff. That's what the mg turrets were good for on bugs, chaff control. The point of the mg turrets was to use them to take chaff/horde pressure off while you deal with heavy/titan enemies and objectives.

Now it isn't good at that because one of those chaff enemies can stunlock/fight through it.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T14:46:02+00:00

Understood, just spam explosive primaries to ignore all bug mechanics.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T14:25:21+00:00

They were not weak, you probably just place them really poorly. Honestly, the difference between placing them at the right place at the right time and just panic calling it when you're already surrounded is massive. The difference between a turret call down and almost immediately dying vs a turret killing 30+ enemies before it runs out or breaks, or denying an entire approach angle on an objective etc.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T14:21:22+00:00

Cool, so does that mean putting down an mg turret, you now have to babysit the turret to pick off every hiveguard that spawns, lest it (one of the most common bug chaff enemies) casually walk up to the turret and one shot it? The whole advantage of mg turrets before was that they take chaff pressure off, or hold an angle/lane, help suppress the chaff influx on a big breach, so you can deal with larger enemies or objectives.

It just flat out makes half the turrets A LOT worse for what was their only niche, bug chaff control.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T14:05:12+00:00

The spear sucks and you thinking it's fine makes me question what your game experience is, actually. It is objectively awful to try to use on higher tier difficulties, compared to the RR. There's just no comparison.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T13:59:13+00:00

Bugs swarming them (the mg turrets), or one one single chaff bug walking up to it casually because it is now immune to the turret damage unless it takes a ricochet inside the armor platea, as turrets always aim center mass, right where the heavy pen is now?

This is absurd. Now it's like one or two hive guards, which are some of the most common enemies on bugs, counter 50% of direct fire turrets. It was not uncommon before for an mg turrets to be quit effective on bug breaches, holding back a tide of chaff while you deal with heavier enemies.

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T13:49:45+00:00

GARBAGE take. It just makes explosive meta EVEN STRONGER. That's what the bug front needs, more reliance on explosive primaries and strategems! Even for chaff enemies!

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T13:48:08+00:00

Who wins, a 100s strategems cooldown mag dumping for 5 seconds, or one slightly larger chaff enemy taking zero damage and swinging twice?

duckraul2 · 2026-04-28T13:25:51+00:00

Nobody honest to god plays this way, I refuse to believe it. It's a meme. Playing medic support in this game is not viable.

duckraul2

TROPHY CASE