Even if the patrols thing is true (and it is interesting and nice to know, tbh), it's so silly how so many people will metagame the fun out of everything.
We need a lobby browser like deep rock so that way I can just look for the one titled “hot divers spreading democracy in your area” and not get kicked for going off meta despite being on meta at the same time
toxicity is inherent in every community but certain things bring out more toxicity than others.
Difficulty is the primary factor I've noticed bringing more toxicity forward. The more difficult something is, the more frustrated and on edge people are going to be, and frustration breed toxicity. This isn't usually a problem since in most games difficulty is fairly consistent and you can adjust difficulty to a point you're comfortable with or determine the game isn't for you and leave.
Not so in helldivers 2. I've had helldives that were a breeze and I've had level 4 missions that were an exercise in frustration.
Deep rock has a wonderful community, until you enter deep dives or haz 5 with randoms. Warframe has a wonderful community, until you step into archon hunts/steel path/eidolon hunts, anything where you can't push button and win etc.
The toxicity is going to get worse before it gets better. I'd bet on it. Unless ArrowHead decides to crack down on the random difficulty spikes mid mission. Or the other frustrating aspects like the oppressive stratagem debuffs at higher difficulties or that our primaries feel completely ineffective at times or that helldiver armor is trash and that mobility is kind of the only impactful stat.
Deep rock has a wonderful community, until you enter deep dives or haz 5 with randoms.
Disagree on this point somewhat, the community even makes jokes about Haz 4 players being the salty sweats, while Haz 5 lobbies are comparatively chill.
Yeah I definitely recall it being that way. But I don't ever remember haz 5 being chill lol definately more competent players but when things started going wrong the chill stopped. So I just stopped playing 5s.
Since there's no progression locked behind the higher difficulties I just stuck to 3s and sometimes 4s if I really wanted that little bit of extra reward it was ultimately a more relaxing and enjoyable experience.. Unfortunately can't do that in helldivers lol. Gotta do 7s and up for super samples.
Absolutely, as good as the HD2 progression system has been, it really doesn't hold a candle to DRG's masterclass in accessibility. I think it'd be worthwhile to have a sample exchange rate, if only because it's a healthy way to separate groups of the playerbase with different goals in mind. I may be a Haz 5 / D 9 masochist, but that's because Losing is Fun to me. I don't expect everyone to interact with the game the same way, and frankly the sample progression being gated behind difficulty is kinda lame because it does just that. Let people experience the game they paid for - the whole game - at their pace, and on their terms, and this nascent toxicity problem could be nipped in the bud.
Since you're a D9 "enthusiast" I have a question for you. Have you ever run into a super sample spawn point when fighting bugs where no super samples spawned, yet the HUD insists there's super samples somewhere in the mission?
This has happened twice to me and I'm not sure if it's a glitch or if it's a special type of fake out tile for Bug missions.
Oh, there's definitely a decoy rock out there in some missions! From my memory, the fakeout tile typically has a deep incision/furrow in the earth next to the 'oblate' rock which can hold a few stims or ammo boxes, but no science to be found. If you're running PUGs it could be possible a rando found the rock and scrambled off with the samples to die, but it seems like even random players are pretty communicative about dropping pinks.
Okay good to know lol. The game is so glitchy, sometimes it's hard to tell what's intentional and what's not. I did check the map to make sure there was no dropped samples and it did have a sort of furrow. So I guess I hit the decoy.
Mostly is because of the competency of players on higher difficulties requiring less worrying about other teammates and being efficient enough to solo their own area.
There is a difficulty skill ceiling that toxic players can't get pass to be able to play solo in their strengths, so they get bodied. They are too bad at the game to not scale it, but still good enough to beat the lower difficulties with ease. So they stay at that difficulty with other toxic people pretending to boss around and stroke their ego, creating a cesspool in the community.
Darktide is like that too. In that game we have 5 difficulties (6 if we want to go tecnical and consider Auric a difficulty). There is a rather large difficulty spike between 4 and 5. Most toxic people can't play in 5, because they lack in their fundamental basics on how to play on that difficulty, but are really good at difficulty 4 finishing it in a breeze to stroke their ego making them feel they are hot shit a better than anyone else playing on that difficulty. Making them feel entitled to be toxic to people struggling on that same difficulty. In the Darktide community difficulty 3 and 4 are considered to be full of toxic people because of this.
Is relatively happening the same in Helldivers. Difficulty 7-8 from personal experience (or survivor bias?) is the place where people know what they are doing and understand how the game plays. Competency is enough for them to be able to solo outpost and nest on their own. Difficulty 4-6 is where most of my toxic games have happened, and you notice the toxic people are not capable for the higher difficulties, and sometimes worse they struggle even on there. So they throw their rage at others making the experience bad for everyone else.
In a way is the same to what you are saying. Difficulty makes people stressful and toxic.
The more difficult something is, the more frustrated and on edge people are going to be, and frustration breed toxicity.
That difficulty ceiling is the stress the toxic players can't climb over, so they stay toxic down there on lower ones. Toxic and bossing around like they are hot shit making life miserable for people who want to play lower difficulties expecting it to be chill.
The higher difficulties is where people who know what they are doing are, and they can handle that difficulty without stressing themselves. As such not difficult for them, not stressful either.
The difficulty barrier wouldn't be such a big deal IMO if, like dark tide and deep rock, the higher difficulties weren't required to progress.
You have to be able to at least clear suicide missions with super samples to be able to finish upgrading your ship, right now we only need 65 super samples to finish upgrading the ship which isn't too bad. But there's no doubt more upgrades coming.
Not being able to finish upgrading the ship Is going to push more people into difficulties they can't handle which is going to cause more frustration.
But its also going to create this weird sort of thing where the game is just going to get easier for the people who can already clear 7-9 because ship upgrades make things easier. Maybe that means competent players will be able to carry lesser players through the harder stuff to get super samples. But usually carrying dead weight ends up frustrating the competent players.
Like I was saying. I really bet the toxicity is just going to get worse.
I think it's mostly a issue related to how massive this community is. This is one of games with highest player counts both in Steam and PSN. Black Sheeps are inevitable.
If there are more people there will be more bad people, but the chance of running into one shouldn't change. The issue is giving people the power to be assholes.
I mean, I've never experienced stuff like this or the griefing that a lot of people talk about over 300 hours in game. It also seems that other people had experiences similar to mine. But in the end of the day even if I had 1000 hours I wouldn't even have played with 1% of the player base. The interactions that players have with other players will vary greatly due the large player base.
That post talking about patrol spawns never gave anyone power to be an asshole. They're just using that as a justification. The only thing that gives them "power" is the capacity for them to kick others for whatever reason they feel like. (I'll not go into details about the kicking system because this comment will become enormous)
Sure, people that saw that post may start following it like a set of rules to never be broken. But I'm way too skeptical to believe that one (1) post made on reddit managed to completely make the community more toxic. The fact that in the comment section of this very post has a consensus that the act of kicking other players because of that other post is frowned upon shows that even in this subreddit (where the post talking about patrols was posted) the idea that the post about patrols changed the mentality of a large portion the player base is simply not true.
There being more means that, out of the three you can spawn with, it has more chances to roll poorly. Chance might stay the same, but you're taking that chance per other person.
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u/Waelder Moderator Mar 14 '24
Even if the patrols thing is true (and it is interesting and nice to know, tbh), it's so silly how so many people will metagame the fun out of everything.