Bluehawk141

I just got Mina the Hollower. I love all the shovel knight stuff, I love challenging souls like games, I love classic zelda. Everything about this game should be right up my alley.

And I can't fucking stand it. The combat feels so bad. You have so little space to maneuver, enemies attack quickly, and the only evasion options are jumping and burrowing (which requires jumping). I just keep getting my ass kicked and I don't know how to do better.

Let me be clear tho, I'm not saying the game is bad, clearly the game must be good, everyone else is loving it and having a great time. I was super looking forward to playing this and decompressing, it may sound weird but I like to relax with challenging games cause it gives me a puzzle to overcome. But I can't get a sense for how I should improve, every death feels like bs.

Like right now I'm in the swamp area, and these frogs with oars just fucking launch you across the map into a pit, and then by the time you reappear on ground they've already lined you up for another bat or are standing right on top of you. Damaging you, and knocking you back into the pit.

Then those plant things with the vines just create a literal wall that I can't do anything about. Like I know the weapons can break the vines, but in this one spot I can't hit the vines from safety, I have to jump down to them but they covered all the landing spaces so when I jump down I get hit, and then hit again by the water skimmers, then again by the vines, then again, and again, and I die.

Trigger Warning: SA and Stormlight Spoilers

Rereading the storm light series now that I have the physical books and just got to Jasnah's "philosophy lesson" in the streets of Karbranth. That moment when her tone grows extra harsh towards the would be robbers and Shallan wonders "what was done to you?"

From what I recall we ended in Wind and Truth still not having a full idea of Jasnah's backstory and I felt like Sanderson was setting up for revealing more of it in the next half of the series.

From this little bit, I wonder if Jasnah is a SA survivor. Obviously it doesn't take having experienced it to hate it, and the line before Shallan's question doesn't even directly mention rape (tho she did earlier). But still it feels like an important moment that I don't recall having been elaborated on later. The only time I remembered this moment being brought back up again was in Wind and Truth during her debate with Taravangian.

Idk how big the Helldivers fan base is on Tumblr, but I kinda hope it's not big, cause idk how much more of that community I can take. There is just so much open and unfair hate towards the game and the devs.

Now let me be clear: there are some major issues with the game and with Arrowhead. There is a lot that needs to improve, and there is a lot that needs to change for the health of the game.

But I believe a lot of the "it's so over, it's so back" feeling that people are growing tired of is because of the community blowing things out of proportion on both ends. I feel like I can't step a foot near anything helldivers related online without seeing it spammed with hate, toxicity, and anger at the devs. AH has made plenty of mistakes, but I think it is beyond clear that they care about this game and are trying their damnedest to do what they think is best. They get things wrong, but they are learning, and learning takes time.

It all just feels so unfair to me, cause there are so many game devs and companies that treat their game and community so much worse. I've been a Halo fan my whole life, and Microsoft seems determined to drive one of the greatest game franchises of all time into the ground. Halo infinite, despite doing so much right, got so so much more wrong and barely learned a thing. And now we have Halo studios claiming they've learned from their mistakes and go on to make all the same mistakes with this campaign evolved remake. Halo infinite was supposed to be the halo game for the next 10 years, well we're about halfway through that and it has barely over a thousand players on steam (yes I know steam player counts don't mean everything but it's the only number I know to find and plenty of websites use it for click bait anyway, so I think it's fine to compare it here). Helldivers hits between 20k and 40k on steam every day. Even if we compare it to Halo's relative release date it was still only pulling around 13k after two years.

All that to say it's not as over as people seem to think it is. Helldivers is never going to compete with the multiplayer titans like CS long term and it was never supposed to. It's a relatively niche game and has found its core playerbase, it'll surge when big things are happening with the story and it'll sink between acts and that is fine and normal. Again, this doesn't mean there aren't things wrong and in dire need to repair, but I'd say we are far from on life support.

And I am aware that a lot of why the hate AH gets upsets me is because I am projecting my own anxieties and insecurity of being hated and shunned despite my efforts onto the game and its developers. I am self aware enough to recognize that, it doesn't change how I feel tho.

All of this to say, I love helldivers and want it to succeed, but flippant and violent hatred towards the developers is going to be what kills the game long before anything AH does will. Helldivers is the best live service game out there in my opinion and I have faith that it will get better so long as we give constructive feedback and recognize that our base line is so much better than it could be.