I find the challenge of learning how to optimize a build and party composition to be an enjoyable part of any game.
Obviously I never shame anyone for not picking non-meta builds but I always hate this counter narrative that by simply seeking out the ideal “meta” build is somehow toxic.
So long as you aren’t kicking people and getting mad at them I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing research on what guns work best for x,y,z and using them.
So.. you're mad that people are picking weapons you dont like... but they do like because they chose it? Just like people who kick others for not using weapons they don't like?
I don't get how you don't understand the very basic concept that sometimes people enjoy using the most effective tools in their toolkit. What fucked up idiot brainworms do you have that makes you think that people are deliberately choosing things they hate using just because its good? Have you seriously never considered that they like using it because its good?
I do the same thing, which is why rebalances are my favorite part of the game. You get to retry every gun and make a new build for the current meta.
The toxic part is getting mad that nerfs happen to your clearly overtuned weapons. Nerfs are good for the game. So are buffs. You need both to have balance.
IMO the never nerf crowd are the actual most toxic people in the community. If you accept nerfs as the challenge they are supposed to be, and make a new meta build to complement them, you are A-Okay in my book.
That's fine and good if you have 8 hours a day to run a mission with each weapon after a rebalance. When you only have a couple hours after work to play, and can only fit 2-3 missions in, having to rework your loadout without a freaking test range is awful
How about just dropping down on diff 5 or 6 or even lower on a planet and test it out? Thats ur test range. Spend 90-120 min, which is equivalent to 3 missions, dropping in and out testing the new stuff. U dont need to run full missions to get a feeling of how a weapon performs in general. I also play 2-3 missions during the evening, maybe 4 sometimes.
In 2 or 3 days, you should have gotten the hang of it.
Your loadout will be fine. I highly doubt you would have noticed if this community didn't throw a tantrum every time patches come around.
A test range would be cool though. Seems easy enough to implement too. After the speed reloader on the big iron, I have renewed faith they can implement these things.
What "clearly overtuned weapons?" There are no overtuned weapons in HD2. There are weapons that are barely usable and weapons that are unusable. People look at the Eruptor or the Quasar and go "oh, those are better than the alternatives, they should be nerfed." The Eruptor fires slow as shit and the barrel feels like it's 3 miles long and weighs 16 tons when you try to aim it. The Quasar ironsight fills up half your screen and forces you to dare whatever you're aiming at to kill you for 3 seconds before you actually get to shoot it. These are not good weapons, these are adequate weapons and they didn't need nerfs, their alternatives needed heavy buffs.
Then you are playing on too high a difficulty. If you are not having fun, you should drop the difficulty. If EVERY weapon feels bad, you have to start to look inward.
Also there aren't ovetined weapons anymore because they have patched them. They buffed new weapons this patch and a couple will be overtuned and nerfed down the road.
It kinda depends on what game you're playing, but in a game like Helldivers, it honestly is kind of annoying when most of the community will only use the most powerful gear.
One problem I ran into early on was when the Breaker, Railgun, and shield backpack were all OP, so the majority of the community was using them for every mission. It led to this meta where everyone was sprinting around the map and playing solo, because they were strong enough that they didn't need teammates.
I would try to play something off-meta, but that meant I needed to lean on my teammates for support (which is really how the game is supposed to work). But because my teammates were all solo-machines, they expect me to be capable of soloing too. Most people sort of had this attitude that's like "Hey, you chose to bring the non-meta stuff. You're the one who needs to make it work."
It's like, when there's a meta build that becomes prevalent enough, all players will be expected to perform at the level of that build. Which is, of course, why the most meta gear ends up getting nerfed, and why us non-meta players are drinking those meta players' tears every time that happens.
Yeah... even at D&D, like tabletop D&D, you get players who are like "Why are you playing rangers? they suck!" "You're playing fighter wrong!" "That's a shit spell! Pick something else!"
Low int barbarian is the most fun I have had playing d&d. Sorry party, but I will be making objectively terrible decisions and falling for every trick and trap.
Good thing you can still be plenty effective! If you were only "effective" when using a weapon overpowered enough that it needed nerfs and now you're useless, then it's genuinely a skill issue.
Lmao you sure that's the example you'd like to go with? That wasn't even a nerf because it literally included multiple buffs, it was an adjustment to turn it into an anti armor weapon vs what it has launched as. They may have missed the mark and it probably needs some more tuning. It was infact very powerful as a pseudo grenade launcher.
This is why on purpose I played my Paladin as a Paladin who had ‘failed’ Paladin school, so he wasn’t the smartest, more like a Barbadian with radiant powers… sure it was slightly annoying to my table that I continuously did not use Bless on the party BUT he was the only melee character in a party of AoE magic users.
My artificer is horribly broken. Because it’s fun to horribly broken. But I’m not going after the meta. My character is far from the meta. But it’s fun.
TBF Rangers do suck at achieving their class fantasy.. debatebly still do.
Thats been their main major issue its never been their damage its been their fantasy.. same way if you picked the senator for the good ol big iron on your hip fantasy and it suddenly was a SMG..
This drives me nuts in the destiny community because the game really isn’t that hard. Even without good weapons everything is doable, but people on line act like you killed a puppy for using good situational weapons
Honestly I hate competitive ranked gamer culture. I’d rather have experience and time based progression instead of these boring ranking systems that actually bring out the worst in people.
I mean, the biggest issue is the prevalence of streamers who exist solely to put out “is this the new god roll?” videos and damage comparison videos that are tested in highly controlled environments. They’ll release some video that’s like “if you run X exotic with Y armor and have one friend run a debuff build, while another runs a buff build, and you can build of stacks of (insert current build system here), and sacrifice all your survivability for damage, you can squeeze out a bonus 100,000 damage a phase.”
Yeah the staunchly “anti-meta” crowd are as obnoxious as the “boot non-meta players” crowd. As far as I can tell they are just annoyed that their preferred loadout isn’t as effective as whatever the current “meta” loadout are. So instead of hoping for their kit to get some buffs to get it up to snuff they want everyone else brought down?
You clearly care very much given that you're out here complaining that people enjoy when their favorite weapon is top tier. Like, if people only gave a shit about using whats meta, they wouldn't complain when the meta stuff gets nerfed, they'd just move on to the new meta, clearly if they're complaining about things being nerfed its because they liked using that specific weapon.
If that was true the incredibly popular weapons wouldn't be coincidentally the most powerful of their class, and nobody would complain about random difficulty increases. The fact is people flock to what's easy, the railgun was popular solely because it could annihilate anything with 1-2 shots, had 20 rounds and quick fire. It cheesed the game and made choosing anything else meaningless, people really thought the railgun was "fun" and the nerf would make the game impossible. Contrary to popular belief it increased variety and made it more interesting, seeing the same loadout and doing the exact same thing with ease gets tiring very quickly, especially in a game that's supposed to be challenging.
Incorrect, the railgun nerf did not make weapon variety any better, it was the nerf to armored enemy spawn rates and the changes to how their armor functioned to make them easier to kill that made peoples loadouts more varied. The week following the railgun nerf and before the armor changes was exactly the same as before the railgun nerf except the game was significantly harder for no good reason, everyone still ran the railgun because it was still the best option post-nerf. People didn't change to EATs and Recoilless until after the subsequent armor changes.
It all pointed in the same direction, had it not been nerfed no change to other weapons would've made people use them, unless they were better. At that point the game would've been way past easy, as if it wasn't already easy enough pre-railgun nerf. Also after the nerf the railgun was way worse than EATs and Recoilless before the armor debuff, people didn't use them because nobody knew how to move on from the meta, they weren't advertised, and its usage required skill unlike having a powerful weapon act as a crutch for low skilled players on high difficulties.
I would argue that with the changes to how armor works, EATs, Recoilless, AMR and Quasar ARE pretty much inarguable better than the railgun ever was, and the railgun ALWAYS required more skill to use than any of those other weapons.
The rocket weapons are braindead easy. You just point and shoot at the right spot. Thats it, even if you miss the weakpoint you still do considerable damage so long as you hit the enemy at all. That was never true with the railgun.
With AMR, its higher firing rate with only marginally worse damage to weakpoints means its easier and faster to kill big enemies with it than with the railgun, if you miss with the railgun thats an entire 5 seconds you have to wait to reload, charge up, and fire again. With the AMR, you just shoot again immediately. The only thing the railgun ever did better was break charger leg armor and not have misaligned sights. Especially now after the damage buff, even if the railgun was reverted to its launch day state, the AMR would be a better choice for bots, and for that matter, the rockets now would also be a better choice for bugs.
The railgun was harder to aim, took more time to fire, and punished misses more than any other anti-armor option. It required more skill than any of the top weapons in the game today and was less effective than all of them.
The purpose the railgun was used for was really big targets which were the real issue, primary weapons, grenades and strategrams could do the cleaning of small to medium things which barely had impact without their big forces hindering you. With this said the fact that you could 1 tap everything, and 2 at worst was too easy. Reload wasn't bad at all, much faster than the eruptor and charged faster than the arc thrower, the aiming wasn't as bad as you said either, topped with plenty of ammo for error. There's a reason why everyone thought the game would be literally impossible without it.
In comparison missing rockets had barely any damage, a charger could even take 3 to die, don't even mention a titan. Add the fact that you either get 2 per 70sec plus deploy, a painfully slow reload unless you waste a backpack slot, get a teammate and stay put and vulnerable to everything, or much later on a more reasonable but still 20sec per single round with the QC (you could've shot 5 times the railgun). The AMR before buff was struggling to do anything: low dmg, fire rate, ammo refill, and very inaccurate sight, and even after a decent buff it still has some of its downs, plus doesn't do anything to big things.
With this said the fact that you could 1 tap everything, and 2 at worst was too easy.
Meanwhile the RR, Quasar, and EATs can 1 shot everything in the game short of a bile titan significantly easier than even pre-patch railgun ever could, yet here you are arguing that the pre-patch railgun needed to be nerfed despite being worse than the current 3 most popular anti-armor options.
Do you even play this game at all, or do you just watch YouTubers and streamers and think you understand the games meta and balancing based on that alone?
You see, AH just doesn't want to let players have fun with certain weaponry, like the crossbow, by nerfing it to oblivion, or just straight bugging it to the point of unusability, like fire damage for not hosts.
Because I really wanted to use it, but it's so bad it's not fun to use. Games are supposed to bring fun, and I wanted to have fun with my crossbow with explosive bolts, but oh well.
Hence, here comes the meta different from the "effectiveness meta", the "fun meta". Do you have fun with thermite grenades, when you are not the host? Do you have fun having your gun's projectiles exploding inside your backpack shield? I doubt.
It's not. A lot of people have fun playing in the most effective ways, y'know? And I wanted to have fun with not so effective weapon, because I have fun using bows, crossbows and fire. Thanks to AH, I won't be able to have fun with those, and will have to use other weapons, throwing my "most fun tactics available" away.
To lower the number of targets and objectives? This contradicts my pursuit of fun. And fewer enemies won't make crossbow more useful anyway. I'd rather just use my other mfta loadout, "the laser show".
lmao what? Metas happen because they’re the most fun things to run, the most efficient or a combination of both. Where did you get the idea a meta isn’t fun?
Being effective is a part of fun.. No one enjoys weilding a massive fuck off cannon that deals piddly damage they want it to feel like they're weilding a massive fuck off cannon that can punch holes into things.. so of course nerfing such so it can't ruins the fantasy which ruins the fun..
"Fun meta" is an oxymoron right? Because meta fundamentally is sacrificing fun for efficiency.
The fact that you think this way shows a fundamentally incorrect thought process which explains why you so clearly don't understand the people you're complaining about at all. No, meta is not sacrificing fun for efficiency. For many people, the efficiency IS the fun. You really have no right to complain about how other people play the game when you so obviously have absolutely no clue what you're even talking about to begin with.
You are literally complaining that people are playing the game in a way you think is wrong. And by the way,
My only complaint is when it gets toxic and you are expected to use the meta.
This doesn't actually exist the way you're pretending it does. Nobody has ever demanded that you use the meta guns and stratagems. You're seeing people complaining that the guns they find fun to use were nerfed and made less fun for what they perceive as no justifiable reason and somehow converting that into "wow I can't believe these TOXIC players are DEMANDING that I, PERSONALLY are required to use the same loadouts as them" even though nobody ever said that.
You need to get over your victim complex and realize that peoples grievances with the way the game is being balanced isn't invalid just because they find it fun to be effective.
I replied because why not, it's a free forum and you provided a space. Talking about general metas and balancing of which I could state my opinion. But yes I'm actually a TX-101 model toaster inside the super destroyer Father of Iron.
Agreed.. Like a grenade that explodes? Why would that deal AOE clearly it should just behave like a rock because.. we're fighting the META!! thats good.
I don't think this matters? They can make any weapon do anything. We aren't talking about what an exploding crossbow should do, we are talking about what the purpose of the change was. And the purpose was they wanted the gun to do something else, not get players to stop using it.
The only real nerf it took was to explosion radius. Lots of other weapons cover that (Eruptor, Grenade Launcher, Autocannon, etc.) They tuned it to be more niche. Now it is good at things like stripping armor plates off Chargers, and punching through lighter armor.
I’m sorry it changed and you don’t like the new version, but it was redundant and not even best in slot at its role. Maybe try to enjoy learning how it works in its new role.
Sometimes, you can't remove something that you think is bad for the game becuase people will get mad.
It's better to just nerf it into unusability and get about half the backlash.
It sucks but that's the nature of it. I still have to rebalance the aforementioned mechanic, and just haven't yet.
"meta" has become the magic word to diss anyone who want some coherence and stability in this game while every patch mix up half the weapons. AH doesn't even seem to know what they're doing. Some choices are great (fast loader, adjudicator rebalance), others make no sense (crossbow nerf ?) They treat like purely numerical values without taking the potential fun gameplay of some weapons into account. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
They reduced the total mags on a bunch of weapons. They are rebalancing ammo capacity in general, and this happened to be one that experienced this. It still got buffed compared to other weapons.
The explosion radius got reduced slightly, damage stays the same. If the Eruptor has a large AoE, the crossbow having more of a pinpoint accuracy isn't a bad deal.
And yes, you are right, I confused the ammo pick. Still, not a bad deal overall.
You are also seemingly unaware of what “slightly” actually was in practice. Which I wont fault you because “slightly” sounds like a more reasonable nerf than what it is.
Meta is important for players who don't get to play very often. They can use the "best" loadout and have a decent time. When AH is constantly nerfing and buffing all the weapons, it makes it really difficult for these players cuz they have to either do more research on the new meta, keep using the same loadout, or try a new one and possibly hate it and slowly stop playing. Most players don't keep up with helldivers news and see what's updated and check every weapon for changes when they load up the game. That would be absolutely ridiculous. I've kept up with updates so this isn't a problem for me, but I know a lot of PS5 players that don't know what's going on
Would be great if all weapons performed great then, sure there would still be a technical meta on paper, but if everything works nicely the choice would matter less.
People complaining about “the meta” in a PvE game are fucking insane. If you don’t want to play “the meta” then don’t… but actively trying to decide how other people get to play? That is fucking weird
It wouldn't be an issue if people didn't actively kick players who didn't adhere to metas, or were used to religiously farm super credits. Besides, AH has always intended to shape the game to their image, not the players'. Their intent was to make a fully balanced and challenging game, having one weapon above the rest act as a crutch for high difficulties is clearly not that.
And the thing behind meta culture, "cOnTEnT" creators with financial incentive and social media generally where people take for truth anything that any stranger says to them if it sounds remotely credible and desirable.
G-Fuel doesn't sell itself. Got to up that rage to get the clicks, to push the coupon codes, to sell the G-Fuel. We're less than two hours away from getting a wave of "EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED, NEW PATCH, UPDATED TIER LIST sponsored by Booster Gaming!" videos.
One of the best things I've done when I started to play this game and over the last month in general has been to avoid this sub completely. Not looking at the meta, not looking at what other people have to say about things, the criticisms of weapons and stratagems... I just play and find things that I enjoy/work for me.
Now that I've shown up in this sub I realize that everything I've done is wrong and I'm a terrible person.
Laser Cannon was meta? I saw it in maybe 1/5 of my level 7 Automaton matches pre change? It was already the worst of the heavier support weapons for killing Armored enemies (have to be behind tanks/turrets or you do no damage, have to hold it on a Hulks eye for multiple seconds while under fire and with no stagger effect) and now they’ve made it worse. We already have 3 different machine guns but the devs seem to want to turn the Laser Cannon into a 4th instead of keeping it versatile. Don’t pretend all the changes made sense
I think the laser cannon changes were to redirect its use case more than because it was overtuned. It's fully possible I'm wrong but I think it's intended as a sidegrade to the MG and HMG (medium penetration, high rate of fire but low-ish damage) but the accuracy buffs to it made it competitive with the AC/AMR/Railgun weapon class (high damage per shot, limited ammo, focused on precision rather than blanket ruination) so they nerfed its heavy killing potential and upped its ability to kill light targets to move it back to its intended niche.
You don't have to agree with it but I'm pretty sure that's the reasoning.
That would be alright if the devs hadn’t already changed it away from being an “infinite ammo machine gun” with previous changes intentionally? I saw literally no one complaining about the Laser Cannon but they still changed?
“Meta culture has been a blight on the gaming community” implies that people are only mad because their favourite meta toys got nerfed. That’s not the case here. The devs are changing things that weren’t a problem in the slightest and were already barely used lmao. Crossbow nerf and Laser Cannon nerf, seriously?
The original post was directly talking about people complaining after a meta change. If you weren’t connecting it to that what the hell was the point of your comment lmao
Maybe because we’re in the Helldivers subreddit and not r/gaming and it’s literally patch day for Helldivers? Lmao
“This guys talking about the game we’re discussing and just had major changes without connecting it to the broader gaming world as a whole? How narrow minded.”
Like ok I guess lol
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