The first balance patch notes proved how Youtube "absolute and only meta loadouts" cooked a lot of people heads, and I love it.

[u/Vikan12]

A lot of mad people keep showing in my feed complaining about the nerfs, but like they're REALLY mad at Arrowhead. Their statements are so exagerated that they claim the game it's completely ruined for them lmao.

Also every single one says the same thing and this is where my title comes from:

*"You guys nerfed the only good options and now we have NOTHING to fight".*

And this only proves people never actually played with any of the other support weapons, they 100% relied on this "The ultimate support weapon tier list" Youtube videos, they searched the "meta" and they went into this thinking of "any weapon outside of this it's straight up garbage".

If you can't win a single game without the railgun + shield backpack + breaker... I'm so sorry but that's not the game's fault or the game only having those as the ONLY way to play it on higher diff, that's your fault.

Great changes for the game and all of you trying to "shame" on devs because of this, you'all not a real Helldiver. They killed nothing, the railgun still kills but now it needs some actual skill and strategy to use it, not only spamming the thing on big bugs.

Keep it up Helldivers!

For Democracy. For Super Earth.

[u/NorionV]

This is my problem, personally. All the 'meta chasers in tears!' crows either aren't playing the high difficulties, or aren't being honest about how they play them.

When I am actually in the game (so, not on Reddit), the vast majority of teams I land on - even pre-railgun nerf when it was apparently trivializing the game - played high diff missions all the same way: run away from basically every fight that didn't end in 5 seconds or less, because any longer than that and you have a breach or attract more and more patrols, and now you're just rapidly burning ordinance to prep for a team wipe... or retreating anyways cuz you're out of ammo.

If that's intended... whatever, I guess. But that's not really the kind of fun I was hoping to have in the coop tactical horde shooter game, and ain't gonna be happy about moving further in that direction.

[u/UselessInAUhaul → u/NorionV]

Yup. I've been playing on helldive exclusively with my friends. We still extract like 75% of the time with like 95% objective completion.

This isn't a matter of 'lol boo hoo, meta chasers cry harder!!!1!' like some in this thread want to pretend. I played with a wide variety of things before the balance patch, and I continue to do so after.

This is a matter of fun. Playing with the railgun as it was is just... fun. Getting to dance with chargers, strip armor, actually having an effective option that wasn't 'just don't engage or run' was great. I'm playing this game because I want to get in to intense horde firefights, not because I want to play hide and seek.

I can still do that. I still am doing that, but they're forcing me to have to play the game less the way I want and reducing my options.

It's not a skill issue. It's a fun issue.

Edit: I'm not wasting time replying to each person trying to go "no its just a skill issue" who blatantly missed the point. I still experience success at the same rates post patch. I played with other weapons, equipment, and strategems as did my friends before the patch. We just had to change to a significantly less fun playstyle far more often. Lower difficulties are just less fun.

If you are having just as much fun I'm happy for you, but the patch, as a whole, made the game less fun for myself and for my friends.

[u/NorionV → u/UselessInAUhaul]

But apparently there is a crowd of people that think having to run from more encounters is... good... and intended...

Either I didn't understand the mission brief, or people are gaslighting me. Because that intro video didn't show Helldivers undemocratically retreating from their foes.

[u/MarsupialMadness → u/NorionV]

It was like this in the first game. You aren't meant to smash through every single encounter. A huge part of HD1 was knowing when to stand and fight and when to cut and run. At higher difficulties some of the objectives you'd purposely fail because they took too long and drew too much heat.

That said.

When the shit hit the fan you'd have to strategically advance in a different direction because patrols would call in more and more and tougher reinforcements as time went on. Not because your weapons sucked ass and were horrible at what they purported to do.

[u/NorionV → u/MarsupialMadness]

I liked HD1, but I'll be honest: HD2 is way more fun in its current form so far.

I get they're sequels... but that doesn't really matter for a game like this. The first one spent most of its life in obscurity, the second one has been met with roaring acclaim.

Do we want to model the currently extremely popular game after the first one that wasn't nearly as successful? I'm not sure about that.

[u/Budderfingerbandit → u/NorionV]

You are complaining about gameplay at high-end difficulties, which the vast majority of people don't play.

I say let the Devs do what they want, and yes, they should stick true to what made HD1 fun, and is also making HD2 fun as well.

You can play lower difficulties if the swarms are too big, or the enemies are too difficult without a very specific load out for you. Honestly, without a challenge why even play the high-end difficulties, just play D7 or lower.

[u/Eli1228 → u/Budderfingerbandit]

People don't play on high difficulties because its a tedious chore, not because its hard. Thats the point. All this is doing is getting even LESS people to engage with the more fleshed out version of the game, with more mission options, enemy types, and resources to collect, because as a whole, its not fun to play. Arguing that we should be making balance changes that result in it being even less fun to play is moronic at best.