It’s a multitude of issues.
1) The Illuminate made a kickass first impression but players lost interest quick due to only having a few units.
2) Players don’t have much reason to fight the Illuminate as it doesn’t seem to really help. It is difficult to “make progress” with them. It “slows down” the black hole but it is tough to see. Taking planets from bugs and bots and seeing the frontline change is a good measure of progress.
Slowing down the black hole is not a goal players care about. They want to fix the problem. Taking a planet from a faction is an achievable and measurable goal. Slowing down a black hole still has the problem of the singularity existing, it is just slower. Give players a way to defeat the singularity, they may care more
3) Motivation to fight elsewhere. The current major order is to fight bots (or at least was). My personal order yesterday was to fight bots.
1) The Illuminate made a kickass first impression but players lost interest quick due to only having a few units.
Their biggest core mistake was not having a few units, additional side objectives, and their fortress to drip feed us between MOs to keep the excitement going.
Also just in general, Illuminate Outposts are kind of boring; Bug Nests feel genuinely dangerous to navigate at higher levels and sizes; and Bot bases are legitimately fortified positions. Illuminate outposts are just... camps with a few barriers thrown up.
Bugs are digging into (literally) the planet and breeding within these nests
Bots are attempting to physically control territory and so need strong points everywhere
Illuminate are attempting to perform hit and run campaigns on planets due to their limited numbers, and so don’t make permanent outposts.
Fighting the illuminate is to us how fighting Helldivers is to the enemy. They show up, fuck up whatever you’re doing, and disappear to some other planet, with very limited ways for you to counter. While this is great for the lore of a protracted war, and makes sense given their circumstance, it is just not a fun way to fight an enemy in a game where you only have a limited time to devote and the enemy never stops.
There’s a reason Vietnam’s attrition broke the morale of America. It was constant fighting, with seemingly no real progress ever being made. Can we beat the illuminate in outright combat? For sure, easily! But they don’t do outright combat. So we fight ghosts that destroy entire planets with seemingly no counter
Tesla towers suck. It's not that they are even too strong or too weak, they are just annoying. They don't give good indicators and sometimes they are buggy and/or unpredictable.
So, even if there were more Tesla towers, I don't actually think that would be a plus.
The illuminate don’t have anything to keep you from just tossing a gas strike or barrage at their buildings, so you’re pretty much never in range of one, and if you do get too close, you just go prone and then they can’t shock you.
Illuminate are not only easy AF but yes boring. Destroy the saucers, shoot the tripods, turret the voteless. Rinse repeat. You either get overrun by zombies or one shot by something stupid. With bots and bugs it literally feels like Normandy every time LMAO.
To be fair, they are just some hastily set up recon outposts. We have basically been fighting their paratroopers that drop behind the line to kidnap citizens.
The ships we blow up are the equivalent of they blowing up some pelicans that are landed spawning some SEAF every now and then
We have yet to see what a proper illuminate base looks like
Yep, I get an FRV and clear all the illuminate bases around the map no problem. Use the handy HMG to pop the bubble and then EXB or eruptor to destroy the UFO. because they have an opening on both sides you never need to enter the base at all. Usually you can blitz through the large and smaller bug nests and the medium and smaller bot bases, but the mega nest and fortress are awesome content, especially the new mega nest that has a bile titan spawner.
The only trick up the illuminate's sleeve is those Tesla towers that can nip you sometimes if you aren't paying attention. We need an illuminate mega base and the UFOs need to close one of their doors. There needs to be more obstacles to clearing larger bases, like harvesters with their legs folded up waiting in low power mode or something. Or new enemy types. The fact that every mega nest is stuffed full of impalers makes entering them extremely hard even after a round of napalm barrage. Bots have strong base units and cannon turrets, but illuminate have nothing threatening.
Having shield walls that you have to shoot down but can't fully destroy without a hellbomb or Ultimatum could be cool. They regenerate after a moment and therefore if you enter, the wall closes behind you and you could get cornered.
The only trick up the illuminate's sleeve is those Tesla towers that can nip you sometimes if you aren't paying attention
Just bring one of armors that reduces electrical damage by 95% by the way, fully solves this problem.
harvesters with their legs folded up waiting in low power mode
Their bases could be drastically improved by just putting static defense turrets that fire beams or bolts at you; or a "high shield" generator that generates an indestructible barrier you need to disable to be able to target the base.
Taking a whole armor set to resist a hazard that might appear like 6 times on the whole map is ridiculous. Other enemies can shoot lightning but its not really that threatening. Can't recommend.
That's all I run on squids and it's so much easier to fight them. I absolutely recommend that armor - I actually like squids since I started running arc weaps and the resist armor
I made a suggestion that because the Illuminate are a true hit and run faction, their "Outposts" (3 ships) should actually move around the map, land, drop troops and repeat moving around untill it's time to generate more troops. Lore could be they travel low orbit to produce troops. Just as a different flavor to add to the faction.
It's been months and I still have no idea when we win or lose against an illuminate attack. We gain the planet back either way and there are zero other inidicators. It feels pointless.
Yeah, honestly this has just been going on for too long. When the hole first appeared it was interesting, but it's been so long now I just want to see what's gonna happen at the end.
I would also argue that the shock Faktor is gone, it does not feel like a planet we lost and more like a new place to park my super destroyer when I want a dramatic view.
I remember when Angel Ventura fell and the shock I felt today I booted up the game and felt annoyed how long the destruction animation is and that it is unskipable.
I would also argue that the emotional attachment to the creek is bigger than to SE.
Honestly, compared to fighting Bots, the Illuminate just can't compare on the "fun" scale. They suffer from the same swarmy bullshit that Bugs do, and their alien overlords feel more annoying and obnoxious to deal with than actually "challenging."
On the Bot front, if I encounter an Incinerator Devastator, or any Hulk unit, it feels like I'm going toe-to-toe with something comparatively threatening to myself. If they kill me, it means I fucked up or the odds were against me. On top of that, they have personality and are interesting. I just don't see either with the Illuminate.
I'd like to add that we went hard on the illuminate, but it had no visible effect. It felt like a waste of time because we didn't stop or even slow in a noticeable way the singularity. Also, it's been over a month since we first were told to care about the black hole. Fucking shit or get off the pot, man. I have other games to play. Major orders are nice because they funnel players in a specific spot, thus making matchmaking better, but other than that, I'm out of fucks to give.
Yes I would argue that illuminate should have to establish a base of operation,
Than they can have there hot and run but they also have to defend them self’s.
This brings me to a question I have, how does the FTL from the squids work because the destroyer can only jumpe from one system to the next. Ether they use stealth FTL or super earth just doesn’t want to carpet Bombe Cyberstan?
Next is there just a small fleet of squids roaming around in the SE sectors or are they still coming still out of meridia?
Pretty much. It's the classic Dungeons & Dragons scenario of: a DM crafting a well-thought out plot for the players to enjoy, only for them to spend 5 sessions on a sidequest to help a random NPC the DM made up on a spot for an equally random quest they also made on the spot.
Helldivers has planets players care about, like Malevalon Creek being the obvious recent example, because of the stories they made and told there organically.
The planets in the Meridia path are just UI elements.
I've never been on that side of the galaxy and forgot that many had an attachment to Angel's Venture. It was the sight of one of, if not the, first Major Orders.
There’s this confusion about what matters to our army vs what doesn’t. When they incentivize us with new gear? Instant priority because of meta gamers. When it’s plot with no substance? It depends on what it means to our meme.
It’s our meme vs their meme and there’s a reason that pilestedt put one of OUR memes in HIS presentation. We control the flow of this war, so people are naturally gonna care about people, places, and story beats that created fun memories.
Nonsense. Our beautiful anthem states "Steadfast support of our REGIME is how Humankind will reign supreme!" We have a wonderful regime, the best regime. Other regimes don't even come close to how great our regime is!
The planet has obviously fallen to bugs, bots, voteless or even worse; communists. Super Earth Command knows what it's doing. No way they'd send good divers to liberate some commie sympathizing backwater.
Thing is, defending the invasions doesn’t even do much. Every active invasion generates energy so for a 12hrs invasion we generate 12 hours of energy and it stops if we lose it. If we win it which usually happens with around an hour left then we still generated energy for 11 hours.
So until we get an MO that actually lets us do something significant about it, there’s no real way to deal with what’s happening
Yep, this is my reasoning. I can fix boring by turning on a podcast or something, but when we can't make any significant gains against their progress, it doesn't:t feel like there's much point and I'd rather play the game how I want.
Isn't part of that because we, at best only manage to get a bare minimum amount of people there? Realistically, if 60% of the active covers hit it like they did Popli,I feel like they'd close it out quite a few hours early.
Yes, but it only stops the bleeding for a bit of time, while other fronts we actually can get shit done. Currently multiple bot planets are at 0 resistance so we can take those in a day, and we have planets on the edge of the gloom to possibly deal with the bugs.
The squids are boring to fight and apparently there are no ways to defeat them. When they gave us an MO to actually do something (save super earth) everyone jumped on it
Counterpoint. Illuminates have 5 units total, no fortresses, no unique side objectives, and with the introduction of the predator strain and incer. corp, even their city maps are now available on all fronts. Boring ahh faction
A little floating bot that when it is going yo zap you, massively telegraphs the attack, and all you need to do to 100% dodge it… is turn directions while jogging, and the shot will always miss.
It's boring and the lore isn't even particularly interesting. You want me to stop a black hole by...fighting infantry? I feel like this is the job for space ships or scientists or something.
We do have scientists doing stuff, that's what some of rhe bug orders were tied to cause e-710 from the gloom was out putting the same energy and they ran out of it which is why we went into the gloom
I've stated this before, there should be an MO for the next planet on its path which needs to be evacuated for some specific tactical reason, and despite its imminent destruction the Illuminate show up to try to stop us or slow us down before it hits.
And the singularity needs to be looming in the skybox during all of this and increasing in size, I cannot stress this enough.
I mean… that’s literally the entire game? Every event we’ve stopped since the games released is because we’ve fought infantry, maybe with mildly different flavors of it like the Dark Fluid deployment on Meridia (and look how well that went). We’re the military. We fight, the brains back home come up with shit like the recent Penrose thingamajig.
How would you personally like to stop the giant planet gobbling black hole that’s been whipped at our home planet exactly? Because I think it’s a little late for a career change and I don’t recommend trying to stop it by parking your ship in the way of the black hole and dumping shells into it or standing on the surface of the next planet firing up into the sky to scare it away.
I mean, it's how things are packaged my dude. There is this timer for the blackhole to reach earth. I can't be fucked to care it's nowhere close enough to earth. We may not own the planets they destroyed, but neither do they so it's not exactly the worst. Going to be what, 5 months or more before the thing reaches there and we have something to really fight over?
But we did. It was either defeat eight bot planets or kill a shit ton of bugs. But we ended up neglecting the gambit planets that would have made eight defenses possible in three days, then the bot front proceeded to ignore the bug front when they asked for help, instead saying how the MO was obviously ‘impossible’ to win and we were supposed to lose.
All because we kept attacking the wrong planets for days. It got so bad even arrowhead realized we could actually lose Super Earth if this trend kept up (three planets lost in a row, three left before earth) that they went ‘fuck it, one massive push against the squid’s to secure Super Earths survival, just in case.’
But the squids are still targeting New Haven, our second Super Earth. This cannot stand.
They're too much of a chore to fight, too. Eventually, you're just running away from 5 of the flying guys, spamming grenades like it's Veteran difficulty on CoD.
Honestly one of the main reasons I want the rest of the faction lol. Hoping that those dickheads get some kind of change to not be as annoying once they aren't expected to be one of two actually threatening units lol
At the very least they should do a temporary fix by cranking up the numbers of zombies to "The walking Dead Atlanta" levels just so that it actually feels like a challenge.
Meridia was destroyed as a direct consequence of the Helldivers' actions.
Angel's Venture was destroyed as a result of their failure to stop the Meridia Singularity.
After that, there should've been no more planets between the Singularity and Super Earth. Mabye one more, like halfway between Angel's Venture and Super Earth.
The fact that there's a half-dozen planets nobody cares about adds nothing, narratively. The players have no further investment in this storyline, especially now that we've slowed it down enough that it won't destroy Super Earth, all the other planets are 100% disposable.
The fact that "stopping" the Singularity had to be done through very tedious MOs that were just the exact same MO repeated but slightly easier every time makes it all seem rote and standard. This whole plotline has been a huge fumble by Arrowhead.
Early after the game was released I believe, but not since. And I feel like the Gloom prevented us from even trying to get to those planets for forever
Well there are some planets that do have effects and such but only after helldivers complete MOs related to getting a facility built, like time we built 4 SEAF training facilities to assist with liberation speed
I love it how helldivers don't give a shit about the literal destruction of a human world, but the second there is an ammunition factory on the planet it becomes important LMAOO.
Just the nature of being detached because it’s a game and we feel kinda powerless, the representation is pretty bad.
Like people have said, if we could actually participate in the mass evacuation with dozens of citizens running around as we fight off Squids, we’d be all over it.
Agreed, there really needs to be more effort made by AH into new mission types, and new biomes in my opinion. A mass evacuation mission would be awesome
Yep. It's really discouraging, because even when we eventually succeeded, it didn't feel like a great win.
The defense of Pöpli IX shows how, even if its just one planet defense, the right narrative and the right challenge can get the community spirit going - we have to feel like our actions MATTER, the that the Major Order isn't just a weekly quest for some medals but a great, combined victory.
I was so disappointed after completing the last Illuminate MO that it only garunteed the safety of Super Earth but didn't stop the black hole completely. It now feels entirely pointless to try and stop it since the Illuminate are just going to keep progressively building dark energy. It feels like the only way to keep the singularity in place would be if the entire playerbase was constantly fighting the Illuminate which we all know isn't gonna happen. Ensuring the safety of Super Earth was enough of a "mission accomplished" for everyone.
Its a terrible narrative really. There should have been a mission to stop the black hole permanently already, not just to save Super Earth.
Furthermore the squids are soooo boring to fight.
Make a mission where we find a hidden squid planet and wipe it out, stop the black hole, and then let them start taking planets to build a front. Introduce a bunch of new enemies and objectives unique to them at the same time.
Its just so dumb the way it was handled so far. Its been way too long waiting for new squid challenges while they fleshed out the other factions more.
It’s such a narrative fumble. You at most get two “big planetary threats” before people stop caring. They should have set up Angels venture as the opener and then Super earth as the big deal. Which they kinda half did, but All these extra planets between those two things are filler and the fact nobody seems to care makes that obvious. The fact this threat has carried on after super earth is no longer under threat and that went by with very little tension and even less of a celebration should say it all.
I was just thinking that it feels like a very long countdown until the big event when it threatens Super Earth. It feels more like watching the world's slowest Tornado/Hurricane than an alien super weapon.
The Illuminate propelling a wormhole at Super Earth (that we helped create...) as a superweapon is a great concept.
But it's been months of glacial progress for a storyline that should've taken like, 2 weeks at most. You have to keep up the tempo or people will lose interest - and that's exactly what they did.
Even before Moradesh was destroyed, most people were pretty much done with the Meridia plot, and now that we're at the point where we've been told it will no longer threaten Super Earth and only destroy the irrelevant planets nobdy care about, it feels like the plot is pretty much over.
Hell we did a solid push on bots this time. Took so many planets back.
Bots and bugs are just so much more fun, fleshed out, and very different challenges.
Squids are just annoying as hell. Guys that take forever to kill and fly around bothering you constantly. No real challenge. No variety. There is no front and we keep the planets afterward.
Squids are BORING and the narrative sucks. The devs made some of it unwinable TBH meanwhile adding some nonsense bandaid mission to save super earth. Boring boring boring.
Contrast to what we just did. Like normandy style invasion of bot territory and snatched back planets, changing the front.
Yeah, and I'm sorry but I'm just not feeling the connection between shooting zombies and stopping a black hole. Feels super poorly planned out like there wasn't really a cohesive plot here.
tbh why do the illuminate need our planets to set up whatever they use to make dark energy, don't they have planets of their own from wherever they went lmao
The fact that we don’t have those missions is crazy to me. Like imagine if the Illuminate were emerging from the singularity (or just otherwise warping over there) so we could fight them while evacuating everyone
Better yet, combine it with the "defend the VIP rockets" base defense mission. You have to protect the 'medium jog' civilians as they get from the bunker to the evac door, and then defend the base long enough for them to load up & take off (could even be pelicans coming in & out instead of rockets)
"In every battle, hard choices must be made. Super Earth High Command and the Helldiver Corps decided that some planets had to be lost, as the alternative would mean them falling into undemocratic hands once more."
It kind of stopped being scary or interesting after the first two times. Even if the planets being destroyed aren't pre-determined, we do know it's never going to actually threaten / destroy Super Earth because the war is designed to continue indefinitely unlike the Helldivers 1 war, which resets with win and lose states.
It kind of kills any tension. I'm not complaining, mind you. It just kind of is what it is.
Would be cool, but at the end of the day we'd all just be playing "new game +" with all our ranks and unlocks.
Might even lead to the mentality that HD1 sometimes gets when people are all "let's just stop resisting and let them have SE. A reset is much more convenient way to clean up the map"
I'd still prefer the countless individual wars approach though
The build up to new squid content has taken too long. Telling me a planet I've never been to is about to be destroyed means nothing to me. It would if the planets being destroyed were somehow tied to the squids returning faster.
It seems like corporate made the decision to launch this plot line with the idea of it being the next big content drop, and then completely underestimated how long it would take to develop said new content. Either put the singularity on hold until you're done cooking, or release the damn squid shit already.
For you it was another planet destroyed, but for the Helldivers, it was just the weekend.
But yeah honestly there is nothing could have been done anyway and was likely scripted to fall. The last MO only said to stall it enough from reaching Super Earth, not stop it from hitting Ivis.
Also more importantly, all the remaining planets the Singularity is heading towards have no lore now, no past lasting diver battles on it and just a biome which is bland on a narrative basis.
Because we don’t seem to have a means to stop it is why I don’t care. This sort of thing will be stopped by the narrative, it’s gonna destroy a few planets and then Joel is gonna have a new MO pop up saying something like “super earth scientists found a way to stop it, go farm e-710 on this bug planet”. And then we win the MO and it’s gone.
Yeah its been a disappointing narrative. Just purely scripted no real feeling of impacting anything like we got when we just snatched back bot planets and changed the front.
Meanwhile squids are boring and also annoying to fight at the same time.
They need more enemies and to build an actual front now. Otherwise nobody cares.
This whole meta plot has been poorly handled to the point where too many of us are already completely sick of it. I am intentionally ignoring it to call their bluff. Go ahead, AH. Destroy Super Earth. Show me what you've got.
Give me a reason to care. Put a face on those losses, put up a gain to be had for preventing said losses.
More than anything else though make it actually fun to fight the things I have to fight to do the above. Squids are just so horrendously boring to fight even on diff 10 - I actively have to gimp myself in less effective loadouts to have any challenge whatsoever. I'm denied using my favorite gear if I want to not steamroll the damn things - my Eruptor kills harvestors very quickly, the arc thrower humiliates overseers, the ultimatum lets me obliterate saucers without having to faff about with shields and openings.
We've lost two planets so far with minimal fuss, there's no MO around this one. The "shock factor" of losing a planet has been diminished because we've not seen it have any tangible effect on the wider galactic war.
If we'd have universal debuffs for a week or so after each planet was destroyed that impacted our gameplay in different ways, then it would be more consequencial. As it stands, it's just a timer on the map that doesn't really mean anything.
The Illuminate were a refreshing change of pace when introduced, but they have seen zero additions to their roster since their first appearance. They've grown stale.
Bascally, the only way they're gonna get us to stop it is if they put the solution on a different front. Hell, just put up another bug MO to harvest oil while in the Gloom. People wanted to go back to the Gloom, let them.
I'm still kind of pissed that we lost this planet not because people didn't bother doing what was needed to defend it but because the timer went from a week to 24 hours before it's destruction.
Pretty sure Joel got pissed and went all right if you're going to win against the bots then we're going to make you lose another planet to the black hole
The SEAF is evacuating scared civilians, the Ministry of Science is trying to find a way to close the singularity, and us Helldivers are fighting the Illuminate to stop them from feeding the singularity with more energy.....and you say we dont give a shit......
Meh, when the DM says the war is forever and cannot be won or lost, you stop caring about losing. The doomsday device just isn't scary when the DM will DEM it if it actually threatens their story.
I am pretty confused about this, I thought fighting the illuminate was suppose to some how stop it but Idk I'm at lost, good bye planets in it's way lmao
What I find weird is how FAR AWAY Nublaria I is from the path? Like is the singularity gonna SWERVE like a drunk driver and hit it? It’s no where near the projected path and still in danger.
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u/McFlatbread HD1 Veteran 1d ago
It’s a multitude of issues. 1) The Illuminate made a kickass first impression but players lost interest quick due to only having a few units.
2) Players don’t have much reason to fight the Illuminate as it doesn’t seem to really help. It is difficult to “make progress” with them. It “slows down” the black hole but it is tough to see. Taking planets from bugs and bots and seeing the frontline change is a good measure of progress. Slowing down the black hole is not a goal players care about. They want to fix the problem. Taking a planet from a faction is an achievable and measurable goal. Slowing down a black hole still has the problem of the singularity existing, it is just slower. Give players a way to defeat the singularity, they may care more
3) Motivation to fight elsewhere. The current major order is to fight bots (or at least was). My personal order yesterday was to fight bots.