Helldivers2 was a massive hit earlier this year where you play as the natural conclusion of the USA after it has dominated the globe and is looking to dominate the galaxy. It's a PvE horde extraction shooter where you play with a squad of 4 dropping in behind enemy lines completing objectives and then getting out of there.
Recently they had a major update adding new enemies and a higher difficulty tier.
They also made some balance changes 
They nerfed 2 of the most popular weapons and the community is in an uproar. /r/Helldivers/ is almost entirely people complaining about the nerfs and /r/Helldivers2/ is full of people complaining about people complaining about the nerfs.
People are review bombing on steam.
What were the nerfs?
SG-225IE Breaker Incendiary
Decreased number of magazines from 6 to 4
Increased recoil from 28 to 41
A minor ammo and recoil nerf to the most op primary weapon in the game. This baby is like a flak cannon you can just point in a direction and delete things. It will likely remain the most op primary weapon in the game after this change.
Adjusted flame effects to work more realistically.
- It doesn't go through various bodies/objects where bounce off would be the expected behavior, like on armors and static objects.
This is a bigger deal as people were using the flamethrower to completely bypass one heavy enemy type's armor and nuke it. It also comes as they are releasing a fire themed premium pack which is a bold move.
This is a major nerf to the flamethrower, but they had already announced it was a known bug a long time ago and everyone should have seen this coming. But no people are rioting and saying nerfing in a PvE game is always bad. Even if some weapons are so OP no one bother's to bring anything else.
Real talk though why are g*mer's such babies? 
The game has 10 difficulty tiers and you only have to go up to difficulty 6 to be able to unlock everything in the game. And people are furious over nerfing obviously broken or op weapons. Like no bro they don't need to bring all weapons up to the point that they trivialize content. It is fine if they nerf op stuff. They also buffed several things this patch but no one cares because the cookie cutter loadout they were running isn't as op anymore. 
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R-slurred argument made by r-slurred people. If you follow their reasoning (it's PvE, and power fantasy, and who cares about balance) to the logical conclusion the devs should give everyone immortality and the only weapon would be a nuke. That would be the ultimate power fantasy, right? Those cute twinks ruin good games.
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And balancing shouldn't be shit and r-slurred making weapons pea shooters and having bullet sponges for "difficulty". That's why Helldivers 2 is shit and everyone dropped it.
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You should be r*ped
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Y-you too.
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The fallout games are terrible for this, specifically 4.
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play a lower difficulty incel
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I had no trouble with Helldive 9. The problem is that it's shit and unfun with lazy butt artificial difficulty.
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It's the shit, low effort version of "challenging", you seem to have trouble understanding that.
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It's not hard just a challenge
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Neighbor likes bullet sponge bullshit
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You fricking moron. you r-slur. you gibbly goober.
Higher difficulties don't get more health! you've fallen for my trap! you look like an idiot!
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The damage this one well edited video has done to gaming (especially fighting games) can never be overstated or undone
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Redpill me?
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Never ever ever ever nerf because it'll make a G*MER mad and they'll firebomb your studio.
This video has been quoted by real game developers like Arcsys lmao.
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Oh it's that
fighting game 
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Direct response too Riot game nerfing every FotM champion for 2 years in a row.
They never addressed why the characters were OP, why people played them or what was the problem
Character has high winrate? Nerf the numbers.
@CountNosfarakeet say this as a feminist ally.
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I'm not watching this but my rebuttal is simple - nerfing things takes way less time than buffing, which is often not a numerical problem but a functionality one.
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Oh frick you beat me to it.
Yeah this video
was fully r-slurred. I'd say it ruined 
fighting 
game discourse, but fighting 
game discourse has been outrageously bad ever since streaming became a thing.
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R-slurs say this in fighting
games 
all the time too it's fricking 
hilarious.
!fightclub
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zoz
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zle
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zozzle
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You're r-slurred. Game shouldn't suck for the sole goal of sucking, that's gay and r-slurred.
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This exactly, an obsessive focus on balance and nerfs is how Elden Ring ended up with two spells worth using (one of which you start the game with) and 100 spells that no one would ever touch because I guess it'd be too unbalanced if the endgame spell locked at the end of a long secret questline actually had DPS better than glintstone pebble
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lol spells in souls games have always been for homos, and ER is an unbalanced mess because every weapon has mega nuke weapon art DPS
it's why PVP sucks peepee in that game, and why 2 is best for PVP and 3's close after.
ERcels need the rope
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The problem with elden ring is it simply has too many spells and weapons. It makes it hard to balance and each individual weapon and spell feels less unique. You can only make so many types of damage spells without most of them becoming redundant.
Most weapons are essentialy reskins of each other because they dont have unique weapon arts or movesets like they did in previous games. Sometimes you'll get a unique heavy attack, but heavy attacks are outclassed by weapons arts so it doesn't matter. The adition of the moon jump also makes movesets matter less in pve because spacing and range doesn't matter when you can just jump ten feet forward
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the unique weapon arts are entirely to blame tbh. gay!
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None of the Soulsshit are good for pvp. Pvp in every entry sucks mega butt.
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2 is kino and 3 is good you're just a gay ugly strag who needs a girlfriend not a boyfriend you already have a boyfriend his name is the LAW and he PEGS YOU
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FromSoft at least tries to make them competitive sometimes, they just shit the bed balancing the endgame of Elden Ring poorly all around. Helldivers 2 is intentionally torpedoing their game.
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Perhaps you suck and that's why you ride meta peepee?
Gonwatch hours of streaming so some dyed hair zoomer can tell you how you're supposed to behave now.
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You're r-slurred keep yourself safe
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Where did I say that? Learn to read bub.
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the game sucks
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This is definitely true but also in helldivers they went full r-slur with the nerfs, most of the weapons are already as the point of "technically usable but so bad nobody ever uses them".
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You're gay and r-slurred
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Not an argument.
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The main Helldivers subreddit is terrible at the game but believes they should be able to easily do difficulty 9 with no communication. The game was marketed as being difficult and it's still piss easy with coordination on max difficulty, it's a co-op game balanced around everyone working together but the neurodivergents on /r/Helldivers don't have theory of mind.
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Yeah there isn't even really much reward for doing the highest difficulty. You can just do 6 and get everything you need to buy and upgrade everything in the game. IDK why they are all upset that the devs don't want to buff everything up so the hardest difficulties are trivial.
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You get to know you're better than redditors (derogatory)
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I played helldive difficulty yesterday and it felt much easier than before the update for some reason, really few bugs spawned compared to before. I legit wondered if they messed up and it was bugged.
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It has to be minimum 7 iirc because of super samples.
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They added super samples to 6 a while ago.
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They changed it a few months back where 6 now spawns the super samps. You can get only 1 IIRC.
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PvE metaslaves are something else.
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helldivers 2 fans when they get sentenced to 160 hours of community service (they get to do chores for hours at a time with no break)(it's just like helldivers 2!):
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You're old, grandpa. Video games is a thing mostly consumed by literal children.
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Wrong. It's mostly dudes in their late 20s.
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Yes, and Redditors
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Which are spiritually children.
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What's the alternative though? Facebook boomer? Twitter animal? 4chan pond scum?
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No need to repeat my words
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I like the nerfs, seeing everyone run around with flamethrower and incendiary breaker was pretty boring, plus half the playerbase is r-slurred and would hit their mates with fire as often as enemies.
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I agree on the breaker. It's actually kinda bizarre how metaslavey everyone is in this game.
Flamethrower felt like a fun risk to try and kill chargers with. I'm sad it's gone. I can see why they removed the interaction because it was very clearly a bug. If Arrowhead had any social intelligence at all, they woulda packaged this major nerf with some kind of compensatory buff. They are clearly r-slurred though, at all levels of the company.
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Idk, I dont think flamethrower involved much risk vs chargers tbh. It was by far the easiest way to kill them consistently, I think its a good nerf, though a 70% dmg reduction like someone else here would be fine too imo.
In the end I dont really mind either way, its PvE after all, but the yeah, the metaslaving is kinda wild and less of it (or a more diverse meta) would be nice. Personally, I dont get how people have fun playing literally the same loadout all the time
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I'd argue that the culprit is actually the stun grenade . Stun + instant flame thrower kill is safe and easy.
Flamethrower without the stun grenade is more difficult.
I suspect we are gonna see the stun grenade pop up as an issue as more weapons get added.
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Yeah maybe. Stun grenade is definitly overused too. Maybe next they will reduce the amount of them you get lol.
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people still play this game?
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Recently /r/darktide was also in an uproar (probably still is) because they changed the balance to where the hoghest difficulty is actually difficult now because theres tons of shooting enemies that got buffed.
This is such crybaby bullshit, the top difficulties should filter out people not good enough to make it. Thats why theres different difficulty levels in the first place!
I dont have the time or care to get really into a game to get really good, so I just dont play on the top difficulty! Its not that difficult ( !carlos ). Just play an easier mode.
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Suuuure, sweaty.
Suuuure...
!dramatards, look at this heckin cutie r-slur!
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Uh thanks i think? So..... Your place or mine?
Anyway, i dont mind redditors not playing the highest difficulty, cuz yeah i dont either. I do mind (well, for a broad definition of "mind") redditors demanding to still play the highest difficulty when theyre just not that good.
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It's okay, bae. I still love you and respect you.
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Most people on other places seem to be more mad about the flamethrower as apparently it's worthless now.
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Yeah, so the major weak point on chargers is their leg after you knock off their armor. But previously the flamethrower would just go through the armor entirely and damage the weak point directly. You can still kill it with the flamethrower you just can't do it as fast.
There is also an 'issue' where it doesn't go through solid objects like enemy bodies right now which makes it trickier to use in general. But it is still usable it just isn't one of, if not the best support weapons against bugs.
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Yeah, I think a nice compromise would be to make it still go through armor and bodies, but at a reduced amount of damage (70% damage reduction for example). Of course I'm sure that's hard to do on a technical level.
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Yeah I think they should add something like that to the main flamethrower. They probably had to fix this now because they are releasing a flamethrower primary weapon and secondary weapon. And as is they would both also be able to nuke some of the heavy bug enemies like the chargers. They really need to play test and fix these things before they release weapons. There is another one that's kind of meta bot side that is known to be bugged right now. The commando rocket launcher can 1 shot bot fabricators from any body hit, which makes it GOATed for taking out bot bases. But that isn't supposed to happen. I doubt people will riot much over it though, since the majority of the playerbase only fights bugs.
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Bugs are more fun imo. Definitly waaaay easier than bots on higher difficulties too, but even if they werent I think theyd be more fun simply because they dont perma ragdoll me usually.
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The devs keep doing this where they kneejerk destroy something that's only a little bit better than other things and the entire playerbase dips for a patch because there's nothing that can fight the new bugs. So the devs buff a random gun (or release a new better version) and the meta/literal only viable option becomes that.
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ADMIGGERS CAN'T SNEED
Snapshots:
/r/Helldivers:
undelete.pullpush.io
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
/r/Helldivers2:
undelete.pullpush.io
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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There used to be a time where using only the best in a game's meta made you a colossal cute twink in the eyes of everyone else. There was a well understood rule that every game needs a challenge and thus self-balancing was needed to preserve that challenge.
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Not using the noob toob used to mean something
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I remember those times to but because of influencers and streamers that has gone out the window. I've said it before but g*mers are masters of min/maxing the fun out of the game.
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I hate these r-slurred g*mers who need everything spoon fed to them. They can't figure out anything on their own and will mimic whatever streamer or neurodivergent build tells them to do, right down to the typos.
They're the reason why so many games are r-slurred.
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There's always going to be a meta weapons. Try buffing the shit weapons.
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Reminds me of this scene from Once Upon A Time In Mexico:
"It's so good that when I'm finished, I'll pay my check, walk straight into the kitchen and shoot the cook. Because that's what I do. I restore the balance to this country."
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EDF6 wins again
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The game dev decisions sucks. They brought a Riot Games meta numbers balancing mindset to a PvE game. Sucks in PvP, sucks more in PvE. And their direction is fricking terrible. Primaries are less than worthless because the devs want to fellate themselves about difficulty and lock the ability to kill heavy monsters behind a 6 minute cooldown button.
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Flamethrower was pretty broken but I'm mainly an autocannon guy anyway.
In general, nerfing weapons because its in the 'meta' is reactionary and stupid. It basically just increases the pool of unfun weapons. Not OP, unfun. I can't think of a single game where enemies being bullet sponges was engaging to me. I much prefer the STALKER route where the right bullet in the right place will instantly kill you and them.
But Helldivers 2 just has too many weapons now that are just "eh" or worse and make higher difficulties really tedious and artificially difficult unless yeah you do go for whatever the next 'meta' is and its fricking boring.
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I think this is the biggest issue the game is facing. As far as I'm aware, they've exclusively been nerfing meta weapons rather than trying to raise the shitty weapons into usable status. People picked up on the obvious pattern so they're mad that every time something is good it gets knocked down a peg.
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I literally will never touch this game again lol. Fun while it lasted
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