I really, really want to like that side of the game. I love the idea of players pooling together their tiny, individual actions towards a greater shared goal and what it can bring in terms of RP and immersion. Having new content gated behind community participation is an awesome idea, and I totally get the idea of simulating a back and forth war between the players and the AI for the control of the Galaxy.
However, I can’t help but feel mostly frustrated with how it’s actually implemented, both in its presentation and in its actual mechanics.
On the presentation side, everything looks so half-hearted that it ends up feeling meaningless. Apart from the major order and a few flavor lines thrown together in a corner of the screen, there’s nothing that make us feel like the galactic war has any consequence on the lore of the game. Every few days we gain or lose a planet, but it doesn’t really feel like winning or losing: we just get our medals or we don’t, and then it’s mostly back to usual business. Even the consequences are not clearly shown: the apparition of bit gunship is a clear consequence of us not managing to capture To it, but I’m pretty sure the majority of the player base won’t even notice it and just think “well, I guess the update brought us some new enemy types, cool!”. I get minimalism, but I feel all of this would be so much better if we had small cutscenes to mark each important step, or even just a war room in the ship where we could read strategic reports or whatever, anything to give it more context.
On the gameplay side, the fact that the only available action the players can do to have an influence of the global war is to either launch “attack missions” on enemy planets or “defense missions” on a super earth planet feels very limited, especially since all missions are played very similarly. It just seems to devolve in a endless tug-of-war consisting of capturing a planet, then defending it over and over, with very few variations and very few reasons to care Gameplay-wise. How cool would it be if defense missions were actually about defending allied areas against an enemy invasion, with radically different objectives like supporting SEAF positions or defending strategic zones against waves of enemies?
To close up what is slowly starting to look like a wall of text, I just want to say that I don’t mean to sound whiny and that I actually really enjoy the game as it is. It just feels like a wasted opportunity to have this truly awesome idea and then do almost nothing with it.
What are your thoughts on this?
Edit: Also, just wanted to point out I realize that budgets exist and the galactic war probably wasn’t (and shouldn’t have been) their top priority. Getting the core gameplay was and still is more important than the rest.
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As someone who spent some time in the US Military, most of your efforts will always feel like they were completely pointless. This is actually very realistic.
Yeah, that part I feel is a very intentional design choice by the devs. Going through the worst hell of your life, barely making it out alive, clawing your way to survival, only to find out that you contributed one thousandth of one percent toward the overall effort. It’s meant to be bleak.
I don’t want to be argumentative I’m just curious what your expectation is in terms of the gaming showing feedback. AH have a dedicated GM deciding the direction of the game. The mech was released in response to winning a MO, gunships and AT-ATs was released in response to failing a MO. They just released a cape in response to the community memeing on the Creek. To me this is the best feedback to the players I’ve seen from devs in awhile.
On one hand this aspect of the game is probably the closest thing about it, but on the other I can see what you mean. The termicide towers were an interesting variation on the standard missions and had direct impact on the war and the lore. If I had to bet, the devs will be rolling more of this sort of thing out but it is not going to be every week. They are too small of a dev team to have that much output.
I wasn’t around for the termicide towers event but from what I’ve heard this is more or less the kind of stuff I would like more of, yeah. It doesn’t even have to be unique for each event, but just a mission type with a real gameplay variation.
Your point is valid about it feeling meaningless, but that’s totally intentional. The helldivers are literally meat for the meat grinder, the war is 100% instigated and perpetuated by super earth for no reason other than to exploit the various planetary resources.
At it’s most basic, it is much like Deep Rock Galactic in that the core game is just a horde shooter with some interesting objectives and wrapped with some background world building.
That all being said, I absolutely would not object to more news broadcasts on the giant propaganda monitor in the ship, or like you said a war room or something where we could get more info on what’s going on.
…feeling meaningless…100% instigated…perpetuated by super earth… …sounds like treason to me.
