How the Helldivers 2 Community Became Divided Over 24 Hours

#helldivers2 One balance patch. One discussion about "the meta". That's all it took to have the entire community of a great game turn into constant drama, arguments and the fanbase being split into sides and arguing.
As new updates (the mechs are really fun by the way) come out, this will probably blow over, but I hope this community remains one of my favorites in gaming and this entire thing becomes a dumb anecdote.

[Mugthief]

Some people seem to think "the community" is the whole game by shouting at me in these comments about player numbers. Most players don't participate in Discord or Reddit, there's a huge difference between spaces filled with joy, memes and fanart, and the people who simply play the game and don't interact beyond that. Extra note: I've had to moderate hate-speech comments in this videos short life-span more than any video I've ever made. That is not tolerated here in any way, and while you're at it, stop spamming comments that "it's already resolved and there was never any drama". This video is here to give us some perspective of how bad things became, and how that is not what I believe this community is about. Give 'em hell out there, Helldivers.

[doublev]

I like a gun, I use the gun. I don't like the gun, I don't use it. I see you spreading democracy any way you like, I appreciate your service. Stay safe out there, helldivers!

[nightshadeii]

Remember a week ago when everyone was having fun and the _only_ thing people were asking for was a _BUFF TO THE ASS WEAPONS_ ? God I miss those days.

[forsaken]

Oh sweet liberty. I have had so much fun playing Helldivers 2 since I got the game earlier this week. Even when I struggled to be good, my teammates were never toxic, and instead they emphasized the fun they had at the end even after failing the objective. I'm not on reddit or any of the discord servers, the most vocal people can be the most annoying to deal with. So I look forward to all the updates and feedback from the developers

[briannickerson]

I never played the meta, just had a bunch of fun, then I went away for a week, came back today and the fun is gone. Thanks for helping me understand the current disaster. Maybe in a couple months I’ll come back to the game.

[brianclementoni]

As a developer of a game myself for 10 years, I totally understand the dev side. I was either hero or the scum of the earth at any given point throughout those 10 years. And its has taken so much out of me, I no longer participate or play the very game I helped produce. That being said - Impossible in a game shouldnt really actually be impossible, or you no longer have a game. If the only "real" way to win the game of Monopoly was to have a hotel on every single property on the entire board - no one would play to win - most people dont play to win Monopoly now, they just conceit once impossible to beat someone else becomes reality. The journey should still be fun though, and in this game the journey is incredibly fun until you hit the wall of impossibility - and this is where the devs - like I used to have to do, need to move the balance of truly impossible and very difficult. 10 bile titans is filling the entire board with hotels - no Strategm is going to save you here, its quite literally impossible vs. looks impossible. There is a difference. Irregardless, balance is hard, it is so hard for a small group of devs to find that balance - just as it was for me, and it will continue to be for them. They will get it wrong, they will get it right - but no matter what, absolutely no matter what, you can't please everyone. Balance is so very key and such a hard moving target. I dont envy what they are doing, I've been there - its a tough place to be. One thing I can say for certain I feel the last patch did, is really try to push you towards actually working with your teammates vs. being a one man soldier with hopes the others are also carrying their weight. Picking and choosing a "meta" build vs a build that will work with what your companions are using is dramatically more critical now then just going with a go-to-build. The game was meant to work together with others, like literally work together, not be 4 individuals kinda hoping everyone else has "got gud".

[IamMaximumFury]

Really irritated me when people lumped all the Railgun and balancing advocates in with the elitists and the "game is too hard" groups - NOT the same thing.

[blerdrotic]

Still a fun game and I’m still going to play the hell out of it, but the devs can kiss my butt. If you find a configuration of stratagems that works for you, don’t share it. Don’t go talking about metas. Just stick to talking about how fun the game is. Because the devs are listening and will alter your fun and tell you how to have fun with the game.

[crashprime]

I`m glad you are making this kind of videos to share more positivity in such wonderful community. Thank you!

[Forsaken]

This game will lose 90% of its playerbase in a few months. Diablo 4 nerfed their players before season 1 and the game never recovered to this day. The cherry on top was when the arrowhead developer goes onto reddit to call us railgun players "brainless." It shows the disrespect that Arrowhead feels towards the players.

[DiscardLogic]

It honestly wouldn't have been as much of an uproar if they didn't increase spawn rates and heavy health.

[gingja]

Complaint part sounded like a Monty Python skit lol

[akirachisaka]

As a pretty casual player who just do some random queued diff 9 for fun. I personally don’t think the idea of increasing the difficulty was wrong. However, I do have to admit the game feels less fun and more frustrating after the balance changes.
Compounded with the fact that the communication from devs does feel problematic at times.
I don’t really think having hidden and stealth balance changes is a bad idea. Since I do quite like the “trying to figure out what’s changed” part. But I think they should be more transparent about this, like “We will be doing a balance patch but we won’t say what are the changes. Just go fuck around with random things you never tried before and see what works. It’s gonna be fun.”

[JRock]

The main reason why the patch was received so badly. Because it felt like a spiteful betrayal by the devs. The game has bigger problems then balancing. For Christ sake it's a PvE game, the patch was poorly implemented. Also it gave the impression that the devs would play wack-a-mole with the "meta". Bottom line it kiled the fun being had.

[TheButcher-fifn]

This community isn't dead! You can't stop managed democracy!

[Spectacular_Insanity]

The irony is that the meta hasn’t changed. The Railgun, Breaker, and Shield are still meta, but the Railgun just feels awful to use. Making good weapons worse didn’t make the other guns not suck. The worst weapons in the game went completely untouched. The buff to the Punisher was nice, but the Breaker is still better 90% of the time, lol.

[yslaar]

I'm curious how this will evolve the game balance going forward. Obviously this was a huge learning curve for the studio in dealing with online interactions, player reception, etc. The hotfix is a good short term solution, but it's obvious that there's been a shift in player perception about how the game actually functions vs. how the players perceive it to function vs. what the playerbase is capable of vs. what the devs want from the game.

There's a lot of moving parts here and hopefully freedom and democracy will thrive in the aftermath.

[norbertfromhell]

Look I’m not someone who would kick out someone who’s just playing with me rocking the load out they want
But this update was simply bad
I don’t wanna invest 30 minutes ore more in level 7 and higher and then just get run over and lost all loot.
Now with this update you just get run over by heavy units and they cripple the best tools to deal with it without giving us something in return that balances this out

They just made the same stupid mistake like blizzard does with diabolo 4 🤷‍♂️

[algalgaq]

the game go from imposible at helldiver level to Impossible at challenging level

[witebatman]

Would you say the game is fixed? I played 2 matches after the patch, before the mechs, and was ready to uninstall the game altogether.