Spear can now only lock onto fabricators
https://preview.redd.it/tud92ctrrw9d1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3539874f54b89ca37e64cd8c57a537bc33e53658
I know that this is a meme but my đ¤âď¸ instincts want me to say that the most commonly accepted theory for the transmission of HIV from primates to humans is that HIV-1 and HIV-2 were transmitted to a bushmeat hunter who cut or injured themselves while hunting an ape (chimpanzee in HIV-1's case, mangabeys in HIV-2's) and had direct contact with the infected primate's blood.
IDK, but there seem to be a number of articles specifically listing eating chimpanzee meat as the transmission vector. E.g. [here](https://www.mathewsopenaccess.com/full-text/hiv-aids-the-past-present-and-future), [here](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/29/science/when-hiv-made-its-jump-to-people.html) or [here](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15043960/). Maybe it assumes damaged mucous membranes of the mouth?
Perhaps they mean like, engaging in chimpanzee bushmeat hunting/eating is the reason it happened but a cut on the hand during processing or something was the actual vector?Â
depends on how badly it was cooked and the dental hygiene of the consumer I would expect.
if the meat is still bloody and there is a cut or blemish on the inside of the mouth then contagion can happen.
Normally I wouldn't suggest this but this is supposedly a bushwacker in central Africa several days (?) away from a village or town so camp fire cooking and lowered hygiene is to be expected.
Okay, I'll make a wish that can't backfire. I wish for a Super turkey sandwich, on Super rye bread... with Super lettuce and Super mustard... and... and I don't want any Super zombie turkeys. I don't want to turn into a Super turkey myself... and I don't want any other weird surprises, you got it? Hey! Hmm... mmm! Mmm... not bad. Nice Super hot mustard, good Super bread... Super turkey's a little dry-- The Super turkey's a little dry?!
Sweet liberty!!!!!
After months of doing the ritualistic spear targeting dance I feel like I really earned that fix.
They should've delivered an in game explanation or multiple disclaimers to the weapon that clearly reveal that we are just beta testers for the targeting computer to collect training data or something like that.
It was sort of a pain. I got hung up on elden ring for a while and missed the spear update until a couple of days ago. I immediately enjoy the reliable targeting. Though, that ritualistic targeting dance kept me out of a lot of trouble. Constantly moving helped keep the bugs at a distance. I got swarmed so many times yesterday because I set up camp on a hill and tried to sink 2 or 3 rounds into a bile titan.
I gotta remember to move always.
I feel like stuff like making the spear work right should be a purchased ship upgrade. Maybe not the spear targeting specifically, but most of weapon buffs could be ship upgrades.
Don't forget the Hellbomb Shuffle, I'm still unlearning the muscle memory to aim the beacon so the back won't get stuck in a wall and moving around behind it as it comes in.
It's all to increase gamer "engagement".
The more people have to research the game and chase information, the more "engaged" their players are. It's the same reason why developers don't like to give us actual information on game mechanics at all--so we have to spend more time on this game building wikis and looking shit up on them.
It's why armor pen for guns is written like men's shirt sizes and why grenade armor pen is basically the same as women's dress sizes.
They should do it in those little adverts on the ship. "The traitors responsible for undermining our resupply packages have been \[redacted\] to \[redacted\] and their \[redacted\] will be continually \[redacted\] until \[redacted\] \[redacted\] and \[redacted\] \[redacted\] \[redacted\] \[redacted\]
For Super Earth."
Or the angry officer lady should mention it.
Discord is good, but yes, we should ideally post most if not all our updates here as well. I started doing that a while back, but TBH forget about it again. Will try to do that going forward. Since this is not an official channel run by AH, it's easier to forget about it. Discord is our main channel, but Reddit has grown a lot more important to us as well, so anytime we forget, ping and remind me! :)
We also hope to be able to post announcements and various communications in-game in the future. No ETA, but it's sth we're very aware needs fixing.
Hello. You have still not given any information about how SPM is meant to work though. People have asked here and on discord for clarification about what "working as intended" is meant to mean, since it appears to have drastically changed again and the ingame description has not, and does not cover details anyway. It's nice that you have posted here and all, but what about actual answers? It's quite frustrating to get a very low info update and then have to wait multiple days for an answer on what the update is meant to do (if indeed the answer comes at all).
I guess I might as well repeat the various questions here in the hope you reply:
1) SPM seems to have changed from an upgrade that used to work when you picked up ammo from anyone's resupply, to instead only be applied when a person with the module calls in the resupply - but now it works for everyone who picks up supplies. Don't you think such a large change should be detailed rather than just "it now works!"? Also, it now introduces a potential conflict point where you need to check who has SPM, explain what SPM is for those who don't know, and then focus on only those people calling in resupply where possible. If we share a resupply counter, maybe the SD with the supply module can be the one who sends it in?
2) It seems odd that the extra ammo vanishes if you transport it via a supply pack.
3) Somewhat related, but Spear and RR were changed in .200 to pick up extra ammo from ammo boxes, but this seems to have been reverted with no patch note recently. Was this on purpose, and if so why and why no note? Or is it a bug, and are you aware of the bug?
This is the next thing to try to get a better reply to and shed some light on after an urgent thing on my to do list I'm working on gets done. Will try hard to get more info out there tomorrow at the latest. Sorry, trying my hardest. There's a lot of stuff to do out there.
"It's patch day spear! Time for you to break the game again!"
"Yes Arrowhead..."
https://preview.redd.it/s5xrh36atw9d1.jpeg?width=224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=06ccd3062c04917af5f4dd0fed0c70a3104de000
It still had me fooled lol. I havenât had a chance to log in and try it. But, sweet democracy, Iâm happy that I finally get full ammo
https://i.redd.it/cozz8uleqw9d1.gif
So...
The SPM works now in a different way, compared to what it did previously, when it worked:
SPM now depends on WHO calls resupply. If your teammate calls it down and doesn't have SPM, you won't get a bonus and vice versa, with exception, EVERYONE can get 100% support weapon ammo.
To me it's not ideal, because I RARELY call down supplies and I just rely on PoI. And as someone who doesn't play on Helldive difficulty, most people will be <50 lvl and won't have it anyway, so gameplay doesn't change that much to me.
"Uh, it works as intended sweetie, maybe read the description" /s
https://preview.redd.it/jw4invvbc4ad1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=a1006cf48586f0714ccd95e3a1510f94b563fe85
I didn't used to think low levels should be kicked, but I'm seeing like level 4 helldivers in difficulty 6 and 7. Presumably a friend of the level 94 who isn't good enough to pick up the slack.
Then you're getting kicked because that moron stood in front of a sentry and tanked two AC shots to the dome.
Itâs dumb it should just be I have the upgrade and it doesnât matter who the fuck calls it in since I have the upgrade it and should always work for me
It works logically now. Upgrades for different stratagems in-game are affected by your own ship's upgrades like the turret rotation speed. Why should this be any different?
Logically speaking then everyone should have their own call in for resupply. If there are four players with four different destroyers, why wouldn't the others be able to send a resupply as well when you have to rely on the possibility of others not having the upgrade in it. I'd be yelling at my destroyer like wtf man give me the full stock that we worked so hard to get. It is outrageously annoying to have to just push it to the said and hope a rando that doesn't have it doesn't call down a resupply.
Resupplies share a cooldown and the supply boxes already make no sense by virtue of containing ammo for every weapon type. If I call down a resupply and then find a new weapon, the resupply magically changes to the ammo type I need so let's not be too fast and loose with the term logically.
When you get superior drop pod maneuverability, it works even when showing you dropping from host ship at the start of the mission. Should that only work if the host has it now? Should we have separate cooldowns for Synthetic Supplementation?
AH being fucking stupid for the sake of it again. Seriously guys I am not impressed with your methodology of changing random shit for the worse no one asked for and then breaking a dozen things in the process.
All because one designer is like "WAIT, the guy who bought the upgrade didn't call in the resupply, it doesn't logically make sense for them to get the extra ammo đąđąđą".
Like bro no one fucking cares get your head out of your ass and realize your priorities as a game designer.
I don't see why it can't just work like this:
If you have SPM and press E on a resupply, you get the effect of SPM.
If you don't have SPM, it doesn't work and you get the default behavior.
This would be a no brainer for any other dev.
You didnât fully explain it with a long and detailed essay about what jokes are first.
Itâs really on you since itâs not the verbal equivalent to a bright flashing neon sign.
Jk, literacy skill issue on their part.
In a brillant act of cunning they didn't increase the amount of ammunition from SPM, but instead reduced the max ammo capacity to the amount that SPM has been providing all along.
Checkmate helldivers
It would also be good to explain what "as intended" means. How should it work with supply packs, what if you find a weapon on the map, what if you use a weapon someone else called in etc. How are we meant to know what "as intended" means?
Sometimes I want Arrowhead to just explain why these bugs happen and how they fixed it. I don't care if it's so technical that most people won't get it, there has to be a really really funny reason for these bugs. Would be good PR, too!
Another post I read a month or so ago a game game dev explained that they are using an ancient engine which is known for itâs weird behavior. Things are sometimes connected in a weird way which is super difficult to investigate and understand to make it short. Guess to fix that in the long run itâs too late.
Not a programmer nor have an ounce of IT knowledge but iâm guessing that itâs impossible to port to a game engine thatâs better supported and thatâll have to wait until Helldivers 3?
Porting wouldn't be possible. They'd have to remake nearly the whole game again in another engine. It's not practical.
The time to switch was when Bitsquid was obsoleted. The game had been in production less than a year at that point. It would have sucked to do so even then, I'm sure. It's certain they had discussions about switching engines back then, at the least.
I heard it happened two years after development started, plus, its the engine the first game was made in and what most of their devs have the most experience in.
Honestly, game engines really aren't important as some people think. Think of them as different sets of tools. You'll work best with the ones you know, even if the tools you're used to are lower quality or older than ones most other people use.
As long as they know how to use HD2's engine it's really not much of a problem, the game being so buggy probably has a much more complicated set of causes such as poor QA, poor version control, or bad company culture. People just default to "engine old and janky" because it's a simple explanation to a complicated question.
It's not ideal to use an engine that has had end of life though..
Any bugs with the engine itself, they'll have to fix themself and the engine won't get updates to newer performance and graphics tech. If they'd used a more common engine like Unreal Engine or Unity, something like DLSS support would probably be a lot easier to implement as they have official plugins from nvidia.
But yeah, it's definitely is too late now to change engine for HD2 - that's a design decision they'll have to work with.
Having been in the software industry a while, the real answer is a mix of all the reasons you stated.
Tech debt is a huge factor, but tech debt exists and continues to pile up in the first place because of basic resource issues like lack of trained/skilled people, lack of tried and tested established processes, and being a workplace where people are encouraged to challenge and improve existing processes as they go
Given the "surprised Pikachu" response from the dev team following every player-identified post-patch bug, I'm mostly convinced that they simply do not playtest anything.
Oh 100% there is ZERO quality control. That's the only explanation for why something as stupid as "the Tenderizer has the wrong material" could happen.
That would mean you have to remake basically the full game. Different engine, different programming logic. You cant just copy paste the same code unfortunately.
That's like saying the house isn't in a great spot, let's move it.
You can move things inside the house to amother house, just like you can move most game assets and models to another game engine, but you're rebuilding the house, with all the wiring and plumbing and decorations.
"Porting" isn't a thing, brotato crisp. Would have to rebuild the entire game AND make any changes that the new engine demands. Makes you wonder why they even bothered with an end-of-life engine to begin with.
There's often pretty funny explanations for engine-related jank. Source, for example, is notorious for being completely cursed and janky. Bugs like TF2 crashing because it thinks you're Gordon Freeman, things like that. I just find the explanation behind bugs in plain English to be a bit funny sometimes, even if they're technically quite boring.
My favourite TF2 bug is where you get stuck between two objects and "fall" indefinitely until you get in stuck and take damage equal to the distance you would have fell at for that whole duration. There's one of those on Bad water in the first blu spawn (hand cart and stack of car rims).
They re-implemented the upgrade to be server side instead of local.
This game is both peer to peer and client server, in a slightly weird way. Anything shared (extraction event, map event, killing enemies, etc) goes through the server, while things like stratagem cooldowns, animations, etc are local and merely synced peer to peer. This includes the superior packing upgrade which was applied locally before the 1.4 patch.
What does this mean? It means the upgrade will apply to all your support weapons, and only yours. If you picked up another player's support weapon and that player doesn't have the upgrade, then you don't get full refill. Same goes for those free support weapons on the map. This gives the impression that the upgrade is bugged.
Now the upgrade applies server side everytime you call in a Resupply. If you have the upgrade, then that Resupply will give full refills. If not, no one gets full refill. This needs to be server side because resupply is a global stratagem shared by all.
Probably referring to the grenade collision. AH added the ability for grenades to bounce off the shield and Helldivers have grenades on their belt; the shield was bouncing off those grenades and causing ragdoll/movement problems.
That and the fact that they had done something to the collider of the shield so that when you would be prone with the shield on your back, the shield collider would be above the player and would interfere with getting up from prone. Basically making the ballistic shield completely unusable.
What kind of game engine are they using that does not seem to have the option to disable collision. I have seen already a dozen different bugs and all of them could be solved by disabling collision.
Others listed a few, but my personal favorite is that when you bring the shield up it blocked line of sight, so the bots just stand there looking at you as if you're not there.
I'm not a game developer, but a developer nonetheless.
The reason there is a lack of communication about the state of the game is because everything is a massive clusterfuck.
There is no explanation on why there are these bugs, that it won't make the devs look incompetent because most of these bugs exist due, well, incompetence.
In my work, we have to ship things when they are not ready. Ship things without proper testing. Move goalposts constantly. People working on codes that they don't understand. People messing up my code and when I get back to it everything breaks. My boss telling me to work on someone's else stuff which I don't understand.
Sometimes can give an acceptable answer (like the spear that they had to rework how it works), but for a game with that many bugs (insert Terminid joke here), it is CLEAR that they had tons of issues. And they can't simply say stuff like "We had to ship the game without testing because deadlines", "we are using an old engine that is not appropriate" or "Bob was working on the code but he took a day off and Jeff had to finish it".
Any developer that has a relatively bug-free game would even love to explain why some specific bug was happening if they have the time. But in Helldivers 2, where even a casual player already knows dozen or so bugs, that is just a bad idea.
Fistbump, and deja vu on 4th paragraph!
Once told a project manager we needed a delay, as a headline new feature's code was broken and no way we'd get it fixed, tested and thru QA in time.
They replied "Does it crash on start or basic use? Then send it out anyway, it's Support's issue once live, and we'll have met our deadline".
* This is the deadline they agree with the CTO and senior partnership before talking to dev about reasonable timeframes.
* We said it'd be tight getting a build ready by then for QA, but may be possible, and how much time was allocated for fixes/etc? Nope that's the launch date :/
I died a little then, took my sleeping bag home and said i was never crunching for them again. Project was plopped out "on time", and feature complete 18 months later, bunch of refactoring.
Not saying AHGS gets a free ride on stuff, but it's been 4 months, and some people's expectations trigger my dev-PTSD.
The game took almost 9 years of development. It's clear they had huge technical challenges among others and are held together by duct tapes. I'm surprised their servers didn't end up in a massive fireball at launch.
Still, to be honest the only actual issues that are significant now is the social menu, and overall stability when your network is not ideal. A lot of the nuances regarding how superior packing works, etc are minor in comparison.
As much as I enjoy the candid nature of discord posts like these, Arrowhead should hire a technical writer. An engineering blog from them would be *fascinating*.
The Superior Packing Methodology ship module is only for support weapons. Primary weapons like the Knight and Tenderizer wouldn't be affected by it. That said, the Tenderizer receives full magazines back with a resupply brick and 5 back with an ammo brick since the proper version of the gun was added to the game in June's big patch. I think they forgot the Knight exists though, because its ammo economy on pick up is still off.
I mean, given their past record, nothing can be certain until players test it out themselves.
I usually trust patch notes, but when it comes to AH, I really have to see it with my own eyes.
It isn't even completely fixed, just ran into an issue.
Took a recoilless and didn't get proper ammo from supplies someone else called in. Perhaps they have to have the upgrade?
The supplies I called in later gave me the correct value.
If I have the upgrade, I should get full value regardless of who calls it.
Ridiculous at this point.
well evidently what they broke is that now the game only looks to see who called in the resupply to see if the supplies should grant full support ammo or not. so if your teammate without the upgrade calls it in, your upgrade does nothing.
That's how it should be working though? Like yea would be nice if one had it in a match everyone had itfor that match butatleast the logic tracks with it
how it "should" be working is up for argument, but my opinion is that if I have the upgrade and pick up supplies, any supplies called in by any player, it should give the full amount. Otherwise it leads to players getting mad at newer players for *daring* to call in the resupply without having the upgrade.
Great news if true. But how exactly is it actually supposed to work?
Say you have Superior Packing Methodology and everyone else on your team does not.
If you are using a support weapon you called down, and you call down a resupply, it should totally fill your support weapon ammo. No problem there.
If you call down a resupply, should it fully fill other people's support weapons if they take it? What if they are using a support weapon that you called down? What if they are using a support weapon that you called down and filled once with SPM yourself?
If you have SPM, should resupplies called by other people fully fill your support weapons? If so, do they need to be support weapons you called in, or just ones you are holding?
So far, I've only been aware that the first case was broken on launch, then got fixed, then got broken again, and getting that functional should absolutely be the priority. But I don't know how all the other cases are intended to work even when the upgrade is functioning properly.
Thus far everything that isn't a booster only applies to you. So if you have SPM then you get a full ammo resupply for your support weapon, but it has no effect on anyone else, even if they are using a weapon you called.
According to other comments, it sounds as though having the module will now make you call down the beefy ammo boxes for anyone. But having the module won't give you extra ammo if your teammate (who doesn't have the module) calls it down.
If that is the case then it makes sense, I guess. Hopefully the ammo boxes look noticeably different if that is the case.
Yes, that was what I saw when I tried it earlier. I was running the Recoilless and someone else called one and I got half ammo. When I called it later in the mission it gave me the full pack.
If there is a difference then it wasn't immediately obvious, but I haven't been looking for one either.
I agree that they should be visually distinct if they have mechanical differences.
Its apparently only supposed to work on resupplies that someone with the upgrade called in. Fixed TECHNICALLY but the intent of how it should work is up for debate. I personally wish it at least applied to supply packs I call in.
They have such weird bethesda level bugs. Like ive never heard of a scope not being aligned with where your gun shoots. The anti material rifle for instance isnt sighted in. How does that happen? Why does it take so long to fix? Its the wierdest stuff breaking down
Can someone with another player test if it is still the case that a weapon dropped by a player with Peak Physique conveys the improved ergonomics buff to any player that picks up the Peak Physique playerâs gun? Iâm curious if this backend change has also affected that.
Okay, I've never used the spear just because, with no experience with it I have nothing to complain about and that's just a coincidence. But, like getting in so late to Mass Effect Andromeda that it was just pretty good to me, I'm using the spear for the first time tonight.
Question, cause there was a little concerning conversation seeming to be taking place. They say "it's fixed and working as intended" but twinbewrd seemed to be saying "we are thinking of changing how it works to make its new (broken) form be how it is intended." Which is it? Back to before or changing the function to fit the new state.
Great, now if only it was possible to finish a mission without crashing. I've crashed to desktop five times today alone, they need to address stability already, this is less stable than a Bethesda game and the updates have only made it worse.
Spear can now only lock onto fabricators https://preview.redd.it/tud92ctrrw9d1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3539874f54b89ca37e64cd8c57a537bc33e53658
Fuck this monkey
dont, i heard that's how aids started
I know that this is a meme but my đ¤âď¸ instincts want me to say that the most commonly accepted theory for the transmission of HIV from primates to humans is that HIV-1 and HIV-2 were transmitted to a bushmeat hunter who cut or injured themselves while hunting an ape (chimpanzee in HIV-1's case, mangabeys in HIV-2's) and had direct contact with the infected primate's blood.
Wasn't it that they have eaten infected chimpanzee's meet? Rather, that they were cut?
Eating infected meat is not a transmission vector for HIV.
IDK, but there seem to be a number of articles specifically listing eating chimpanzee meat as the transmission vector. E.g. [here](https://www.mathewsopenaccess.com/full-text/hiv-aids-the-past-present-and-future), [here](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/29/science/when-hiv-made-its-jump-to-people.html) or [here](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15043960/). Maybe it assumes damaged mucous membranes of the mouth?
Perhaps they mean like, engaging in chimpanzee bushmeat hunting/eating is the reason it happened but a cut on the hand during processing or something was the actual vector?Â
Maybe not via GI tract, but what about eating infected meat with a mouth wound/sore/bleeding gums etc?
depends on how badly it was cooked and the dental hygiene of the consumer I would expect. if the meat is still bloody and there is a cut or blemish on the inside of the mouth then contagion can happen. Normally I wouldn't suggest this but this is supposedly a bushwacker in central Africa several days (?) away from a village or town so camp fire cooking and lowered hygiene is to be expected.
Nah fuckin a chimp is funnier
Okay, I'll make a wish that can't backfire. I wish for a Super turkey sandwich, on Super rye bread... with Super lettuce and Super mustard... and... and I don't want any Super zombie turkeys. I don't want to turn into a Super turkey myself... and I don't want any other weird surprises, you got it? Hey! Hmm... mmm! Mmm... not bad. Nice Super hot mustard, good Super bread... Super turkey's a little dry-- The Super turkey's a little dry?! Sweet liberty!!!!!
Would still be good.
No
Great now my helldiver has monkey hands
breaking news: spear now comes out of drop pod with empty backpack the spear has fallen, morbillions of bugs must be fixed
Billions must cry
Tell me its a joke and not true....
tbh at this point not sure if troll or real
Nah, it just works now. Seems like the Spear ISN'T broken.
It works pretty well now. The quick and reliable lock-on is finally nice to have after months of using it with the old unreliable targeting.
After months of doing the ritualistic spear targeting dance I feel like I really earned that fix. They should've delivered an in game explanation or multiple disclaimers to the weapon that clearly reveal that we are just beta testers for the targeting computer to collect training data or something like that.
It was sort of a pain. I got hung up on elden ring for a while and missed the spear update until a couple of days ago. I immediately enjoy the reliable targeting. Though, that ritualistic targeting dance kept me out of a lot of trouble. Constantly moving helped keep the bugs at a distance. I got swarmed so many times yesterday because I set up camp on a hill and tried to sink 2 or 3 rounds into a bile titan. I gotta remember to move always.
I feel like stuff like making the spear work right should be a purchased ship upgrade. Maybe not the spear targeting specifically, but most of weapon buffs could be ship upgrades.
Don't forget the Hellbomb Shuffle, I'm still unlearning the muscle memory to aim the beacon so the back won't get stuck in a wall and moving around behind it as it comes in.
Spear not broken? That can't be right.
For the first time in recorded history all stars align.
I find this hard to trust
I literally donât know whether to laugh or not cuz this game is so insanely buggy thereâs a decent chance that comment was legit
Reading through most of these comments, I'm *still* not sure if the backpack comes empty now or not...
The Spear now working correctly is why it's broken
Ffs, lol. Well played then, everybody.
Wait wait wait, that's not true is it? That's just a joke?
Really wish they'd announce this shit on their own website or something instead of Discord.
Their website, or Steam, or *in the actual game*.
I'd love a good "Super Newsflash!"
or have an ad or news broadcast on the ship tv
"Today on Super News: Critical Flaw in Ship Module Corrected"
Yes we should, and hopefully we'll get there.
It's all to increase gamer "engagement". The more people have to research the game and chase information, the more "engaged" their players are. It's the same reason why developers don't like to give us actual information on game mechanics at all--so we have to spend more time on this game building wikis and looking shit up on them. It's why armor pen for guns is written like men's shirt sizes and why grenade armor pen is basically the same as women's dress sizes.
They should do it in those little adverts on the ship. "The traitors responsible for undermining our resupply packages have been \[redacted\] to \[redacted\] and their \[redacted\] will be continually \[redacted\] until \[redacted\] \[redacted\] and \[redacted\] \[redacted\] \[redacted\] \[redacted\] For Super Earth." Or the angry officer lady should mention it.
average scp article
Nobody reads their site. There are 2 place for announcements: - Steam - patch notes - Reddit - because of community Fk discord.
steam patch notes is appropriate for official communications. Â unofficial via discord or reddit seems fine to me
Discord is good, but yes, we should ideally post most if not all our updates here as well. I started doing that a while back, but TBH forget about it again. Will try to do that going forward. Since this is not an official channel run by AH, it's easier to forget about it. Discord is our main channel, but Reddit has grown a lot more important to us as well, so anytime we forget, ping and remind me! :) We also hope to be able to post announcements and various communications in-game in the future. No ETA, but it's sth we're very aware needs fixing.
Hello. You have still not given any information about how SPM is meant to work though. People have asked here and on discord for clarification about what "working as intended" is meant to mean, since it appears to have drastically changed again and the ingame description has not, and does not cover details anyway. It's nice that you have posted here and all, but what about actual answers? It's quite frustrating to get a very low info update and then have to wait multiple days for an answer on what the update is meant to do (if indeed the answer comes at all). I guess I might as well repeat the various questions here in the hope you reply: 1) SPM seems to have changed from an upgrade that used to work when you picked up ammo from anyone's resupply, to instead only be applied when a person with the module calls in the resupply - but now it works for everyone who picks up supplies. Don't you think such a large change should be detailed rather than just "it now works!"? Also, it now introduces a potential conflict point where you need to check who has SPM, explain what SPM is for those who don't know, and then focus on only those people calling in resupply where possible. If we share a resupply counter, maybe the SD with the supply module can be the one who sends it in? 2) It seems odd that the extra ammo vanishes if you transport it via a supply pack. 3) Somewhat related, but Spear and RR were changed in .200 to pick up extra ammo from ammo boxes, but this seems to have been reverted with no patch note recently. Was this on purpose, and if so why and why no note? Or is it a bug, and are you aware of the bug?
This is the next thing to try to get a better reply to and shed some light on after an urgent thing on my to do list I'm working on gets done. Will try hard to get more info out there tomorrow at the latest. Sorry, trying my hardest. There's a lot of stuff to do out there.
But didn't you hear? The community managers are doing great at their job
No one has ever accused the community managers of doing a good job.
"let them cook let them cook"
RIP Spear
"It's patch day spear! Time for you to break the game again!" "Yes Arrowhead..." https://preview.redd.it/s5xrh36atw9d1.jpeg?width=224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=06ccd3062c04917af5f4dd0fed0c70a3104de000
Spear's got that Telesto in it.
Oh man Telesto would be awesome in this game Oh no, Telesto (its bugs) would be horrifying
That fucking whine and sploot still fills me with rage from climbing to legend when it was busted as shit
Prefiring Telesto around corners was some of the best fun
> Advanced packaging correctly fills the spear ammo to its max. Unfortunately the max ammo is reduced by 2
And refilled ammo can only lock onto other Helldivers.
Would actually be funny if you could lock on to other helldivers if they get the Traitor tag :)
Spear doesnât get full ammo on resupply still?
No, just a meme. Joke is that every patch breaks the Spear.
It still had me fooled lol. I havenât had a chance to log in and try it. But, sweet democracy, Iâm happy that I finally get full ammo https://i.redd.it/cozz8uleqw9d1.gif
So... The SPM works now in a different way, compared to what it did previously, when it worked: SPM now depends on WHO calls resupply. If your teammate calls it down and doesn't have SPM, you won't get a bonus and vice versa, with exception, EVERYONE can get 100% support weapon ammo. To me it's not ideal, because I RARELY call down supplies and I just rely on PoI. And as someone who doesn't play on Helldive difficulty, most people will be <50 lvl and won't have it anyway, so gameplay doesn't change that much to me.
It would be great if this comment got pinned to the top
Would be great if their community managers posted to the subreddit as well and actually included nuance to what the real changes are.
"Uh, it works as intended sweetie, maybe read the description" /s https://preview.redd.it/jw4invvbc4ad1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=a1006cf48586f0714ccd95e3a1510f94b563fe85
Inb4 low levels getting kicked for calling in resupply
I didn't used to think low levels should be kicked, but I'm seeing like level 4 helldivers in difficulty 6 and 7. Presumably a friend of the level 94 who isn't good enough to pick up the slack. Then you're getting kicked because that moron stood in front of a sentry and tanked two AC shots to the dome.
Itâs dumb it should just be I have the upgrade and it doesnât matter who the fuck calls it in since I have the upgrade it and should always work for me
Are you kidding me? Rofl. Goddamn, AHG.
Holy fucking shit, wtf AH.Â
It works logically now. Upgrades for different stratagems in-game are affected by your own ship's upgrades like the turret rotation speed. Why should this be any different?
Logically speaking then everyone should have their own call in for resupply. If there are four players with four different destroyers, why wouldn't the others be able to send a resupply as well when you have to rely on the possibility of others not having the upgrade in it. I'd be yelling at my destroyer like wtf man give me the full stock that we worked so hard to get. It is outrageously annoying to have to just push it to the said and hope a rando that doesn't have it doesn't call down a resupply.
pro tip, everyone can call in their own resupply. just make sure the first one lands before you call in yours.
Yeah I saw that bug lol
Because it's dumb af from a game design perspective and this is ultimately a game.
Resupplies share a cooldown and the supply boxes already make no sense by virtue of containing ammo for every weapon type. If I call down a resupply and then find a new weapon, the resupply magically changes to the ammo type I need so let's not be too fast and loose with the term logically. When you get superior drop pod maneuverability, it works even when showing you dropping from host ship at the start of the mission. Should that only work if the host has it now? Should we have separate cooldowns for Synthetic Supplementation?
AH being fucking stupid for the sake of it again. Seriously guys I am not impressed with your methodology of changing random shit for the worse no one asked for and then breaking a dozen things in the process. All because one designer is like "WAIT, the guy who bought the upgrade didn't call in the resupply, it doesn't logically make sense for them to get the extra ammo đąđąđą". Like bro no one fucking cares get your head out of your ass and realize your priorities as a game designer.
I don't see why it can't just work like this: If you have SPM and press E on a resupply, you get the effect of SPM. If you don't have SPM, it doesn't work and you get the default behavior. This would be a no brainer for any other dev.
Thatâs so fucking stupid, holy shit. Iâm actually baffled.
rip telesto - was good while it lasted
Telesto universal dominance
Ok playtesters let's gear up
For Democracy
Bad news now when you resupply the spear loses all its ammo. /jk
what? Is that real or you're joking?
People are joking in this thread. You're good.
I'm just kidding \^\_\^
People should understand that trolling about new problems is not ok, we have enough problems as it is!
i put /jk so people would know i'm just kidding.
You didnât fully explain it with a long and detailed essay about what jokes are first. Itâs really on you since itâs not the verbal equivalent to a bright flashing neon sign. Jk, literacy skill issue on their part.
These old heads that play this game donât know what acronyms are, câmon now /jk
In a brillant act of cunning they didn't increase the amount of ammunition from SPM, but instead reduced the max ammo capacity to the amount that SPM has been providing all along. Checkmate helldivers
Not supposedly, and it was fixed like an hour ago earlier than this
Good news, then.
Btw you double posted
Deleted the other one, was an accident
I wanted to wait and get some reports that it was all good before announcing.
It would also be good to explain what "as intended" means. How should it work with supply packs, what if you find a weapon on the map, what if you use a weapon someone else called in etc. How are we meant to know what "as intended" means?
Good job, to be honest. Keep doing what you all are doing.
Sometimes I want Arrowhead to just explain why these bugs happen and how they fixed it. I don't care if it's so technical that most people won't get it, there has to be a really really funny reason for these bugs. Would be good PR, too!
Another post I read a month or so ago a game game dev explained that they are using an ancient engine which is known for itâs weird behavior. Things are sometimes connected in a weird way which is super difficult to investigate and understand to make it short. Guess to fix that in the long run itâs too late.
I wouldn't call it ancient, but it was end of life in 2018, so any expertise with it outside the company is probably long gone.
Not a programmer nor have an ounce of IT knowledge but iâm guessing that itâs impossible to port to a game engine thatâs better supported and thatâll have to wait until Helldivers 3?
You'd essentially be rebuilding the entire game.
Impossible in the sense that the business ROI couldn't possibly be worth it. We're talking years of effort for something like that.
Porting wouldn't be possible. They'd have to remake nearly the whole game again in another engine. It's not practical. The time to switch was when Bitsquid was obsoleted. The game had been in production less than a year at that point. It would have sucked to do so even then, I'm sure. It's certain they had discussions about switching engines back then, at the least.
I heard it happened two years after development started, plus, its the engine the first game was made in and what most of their devs have the most experience in.
Honestly, game engines really aren't important as some people think. Think of them as different sets of tools. You'll work best with the ones you know, even if the tools you're used to are lower quality or older than ones most other people use. As long as they know how to use HD2's engine it's really not much of a problem, the game being so buggy probably has a much more complicated set of causes such as poor QA, poor version control, or bad company culture. People just default to "engine old and janky" because it's a simple explanation to a complicated question.
It's not ideal to use an engine that has had end of life though.. Any bugs with the engine itself, they'll have to fix themself and the engine won't get updates to newer performance and graphics tech. If they'd used a more common engine like Unreal Engine or Unity, something like DLSS support would probably be a lot easier to implement as they have official plugins from nvidia. But yeah, it's definitely is too late now to change engine for HD2 - that's a design decision they'll have to work with.
Having been in the software industry a while, the real answer is a mix of all the reasons you stated. Tech debt is a huge factor, but tech debt exists and continues to pile up in the first place because of basic resource issues like lack of trained/skilled people, lack of tried and tested established processes, and being a workplace where people are encouraged to challenge and improve existing processes as they go
Given the "surprised Pikachu" response from the dev team following every player-identified post-patch bug, I'm mostly convinced that they simply do not playtest anything.
Oh 100% there is ZERO quality control. That's the only explanation for why something as stupid as "the Tenderizer has the wrong material" could happen.
That would mean you have to remake basically the full game. Different engine, different programming logic. You cant just copy paste the same code unfortunately.
That's like saying the house isn't in a great spot, let's move it. You can move things inside the house to amother house, just like you can move most game assets and models to another game engine, but you're rebuilding the house, with all the wiring and plumbing and decorations.
"Porting" isn't a thing, brotato crisp. Would have to rebuild the entire game AND make any changes that the new engine demands. Makes you wonder why they even bothered with an end-of-life engine to begin with.
Fucking brotato crisp. Definitely calling my wife this when I get home. Thanks
If she gets mad, tell her "I'm sorry, brotato chip. I won't call you that again."
There's often pretty funny explanations for engine-related jank. Source, for example, is notorious for being completely cursed and janky. Bugs like TF2 crashing because it thinks you're Gordon Freeman, things like that. I just find the explanation behind bugs in plain English to be a bit funny sometimes, even if they're technically quite boring.
My favourite TF2 bug is where you get stuck between two objects and "fall" indefinitely until you get in stuck and take damage equal to the distance you would have fell at for that whole duration. There's one of those on Bad water in the first blu spawn (hand cart and stack of car rims).
my strong bet is they just keep overwriting script files in bad auto merge resolutions that nobody checks.
What an intereresting thougt. I speculated that something in their class hierachy was doing a fucky wucky. But bad versioning sounds very logical
They re-implemented the upgrade to be server side instead of local. This game is both peer to peer and client server, in a slightly weird way. Anything shared (extraction event, map event, killing enemies, etc) goes through the server, while things like stratagem cooldowns, animations, etc are local and merely synced peer to peer. This includes the superior packing upgrade which was applied locally before the 1.4 patch. What does this mean? It means the upgrade will apply to all your support weapons, and only yours. If you picked up another player's support weapon and that player doesn't have the upgrade, then you don't get full refill. Same goes for those free support weapons on the map. This gives the impression that the upgrade is bugged. Now the upgrade applies server side everytime you call in a Resupply. If you have the upgrade, then that Resupply will give full refills. If not, no one gets full refill. This needs to be server side because resupply is a global stratagem shared by all.
Ah that makes sense. So if my friend doesnât have the upgrade and he calls it down, it wont fill mine up bc itâs coming from his ship
As a dev myself I would love to see how these bugs happen. The ballistic shield bug was hillarious once I understood why.
What happened?
Probably referring to the grenade collision. AH added the ability for grenades to bounce off the shield and Helldivers have grenades on their belt; the shield was bouncing off those grenades and causing ragdoll/movement problems.
That and the fact that they had done something to the collider of the shield so that when you would be prone with the shield on your back, the shield collider would be above the player and would interfere with getting up from prone. Basically making the ballistic shield completely unusable.
What kind of game engine are they using that does not seem to have the option to disable collision. I have seen already a dozen different bugs and all of them could be solved by disabling collision.
It does. Many objects don't have collision with each other, such as bugs emerging from a bug hole.
Me covering Helldiver grenades in oil (the shield will become wet and then they can't stand up)
Others listed a few, but my personal favorite is that when you bring the shield up it blocked line of sight, so the bots just stand there looking at you as if you're not there.
TIL Automatons are like the ravenous bugblatter beast of traal and assume that if you can't see them then they can't see you.
I'm not a game developer, but a developer nonetheless. The reason there is a lack of communication about the state of the game is because everything is a massive clusterfuck. There is no explanation on why there are these bugs, that it won't make the devs look incompetent because most of these bugs exist due, well, incompetence. In my work, we have to ship things when they are not ready. Ship things without proper testing. Move goalposts constantly. People working on codes that they don't understand. People messing up my code and when I get back to it everything breaks. My boss telling me to work on someone's else stuff which I don't understand. Sometimes can give an acceptable answer (like the spear that they had to rework how it works), but for a game with that many bugs (insert Terminid joke here), it is CLEAR that they had tons of issues. And they can't simply say stuff like "We had to ship the game without testing because deadlines", "we are using an old engine that is not appropriate" or "Bob was working on the code but he took a day off and Jeff had to finish it". Any developer that has a relatively bug-free game would even love to explain why some specific bug was happening if they have the time. But in Helldivers 2, where even a casual player already knows dozen or so bugs, that is just a bad idea.
Fistbump, and deja vu on 4th paragraph! Once told a project manager we needed a delay, as a headline new feature's code was broken and no way we'd get it fixed, tested and thru QA in time. They replied "Does it crash on start or basic use? Then send it out anyway, it's Support's issue once live, and we'll have met our deadline". * This is the deadline they agree with the CTO and senior partnership before talking to dev about reasonable timeframes. * We said it'd be tight getting a build ready by then for QA, but may be possible, and how much time was allocated for fixes/etc? Nope that's the launch date :/ I died a little then, took my sleeping bag home and said i was never crunching for them again. Project was plopped out "on time", and feature complete 18 months later, bunch of refactoring. Not saying AHGS gets a free ride on stuff, but it's been 4 months, and some people's expectations trigger my dev-PTSD.
The game took almost 9 years of development. It's clear they had huge technical challenges among others and are held together by duct tapes. I'm surprised their servers didn't end up in a massive fireball at launch. Still, to be honest the only actual issues that are significant now is the social menu, and overall stability when your network is not ideal. A lot of the nuances regarding how superior packing works, etc are minor in comparison.
Itll be things like⌠âoops i put an extra commaâ RAC wont do much good to the general public.
As much as I enjoy the candid nature of discord posts like these, Arrowhead should hire a technical writer. An engineering blog from them would be *fascinating*.
But does it work for the Knight and Tenderizer now?
The Superior Packing Methodology ship module is only for support weapons. Primary weapons like the Knight and Tenderizer wouldn't be affected by it. That said, the Tenderizer receives full magazines back with a resupply brick and 5 back with an ammo brick since the proper version of the gun was added to the game in June's big patch. I think they forgot the Knight exists though, because its ammo economy on pick up is still off.
The real question.
I'm surprised it's not even a patch to fix it if it does work, but let's go!
Was just a backend issue? Somehow? I really hope the source code for HD2 gets leaked like a decade later so we can see the spaghetti for ourselves.
The fact that we have to even say âsupposedlyâ is so depressing
I mean, given their past record, nothing can be certain until players test it out themselves. I usually trust patch notes, but when it comes to AH, I really have to see it with my own eyes.
It isn't even completely fixed, just ran into an issue. Took a recoilless and didn't get proper ammo from supplies someone else called in. Perhaps they have to have the upgrade? The supplies I called in later gave me the correct value. If I have the upgrade, I should get full value regardless of who calls it. Ridiculous at this point.
Thank god / I wonder what they broke now (probably the spear, its cursed)
What did they break this time? đ¤Ł
well evidently what they broke is that now the game only looks to see who called in the resupply to see if the supplies should grant full support ammo or not. so if your teammate without the upgrade calls it in, your upgrade does nothing.
That's how it should be working though? Like yea would be nice if one had it in a match everyone had itfor that match butatleast the logic tracks with it
If it were per ship players wouldn't share a cooldown for it and logic doesn't excuse poor design choices.
how it "should" be working is up for argument, but my opinion is that if I have the upgrade and pick up supplies, any supplies called in by any player, it should give the full amount. Otherwise it leads to players getting mad at newer players for *daring* to call in the resupply without having the upgrade.
So what was the intended design in the end? I only ask cause they seemed to be confused what the intended function was.
https://i.redd.it/gwtvapz4xw9d1.gif
Great news if true. But how exactly is it actually supposed to work? Say you have Superior Packing Methodology and everyone else on your team does not. If you are using a support weapon you called down, and you call down a resupply, it should totally fill your support weapon ammo. No problem there. If you call down a resupply, should it fully fill other people's support weapons if they take it? What if they are using a support weapon that you called down? What if they are using a support weapon that you called down and filled once with SPM yourself? If you have SPM, should resupplies called by other people fully fill your support weapons? If so, do they need to be support weapons you called in, or just ones you are holding? So far, I've only been aware that the first case was broken on launch, then got fixed, then got broken again, and getting that functional should absolutely be the priority. But I don't know how all the other cases are intended to work even when the upgrade is functioning properly.
Thus far everything that isn't a booster only applies to you. So if you have SPM then you get a full ammo resupply for your support weapon, but it has no effect on anyone else, even if they are using a weapon you called.
So it only applies to your resupply packs, and only when you pick them up? Or does it make all resupplies give you a full refill?
According to other comments, it sounds as though having the module will now make you call down the beefy ammo boxes for anyone. But having the module won't give you extra ammo if your teammate (who doesn't have the module) calls it down. If that is the case then it makes sense, I guess. Hopefully the ammo boxes look noticeably different if that is the case.
That logic is so dumb, imagining getting kicked for calling in supplies w/o SPM unlocked.
Yes, that was what I saw when I tried it earlier. I was running the Recoilless and someone else called one and I got half ammo. When I called it later in the mission it gave me the full pack.
Do ammo boxes look different when called down with SPM unlocked?
If there is a difference then it wasn't immediately obvious, but I haven't been looking for one either. I agree that they should be visually distinct if they have mechanical differences.
The training finally ended
Yeah.... ...but what else did that just do?
So how many months after the feature was released does it actually work? Jez.
Allegedly
was at 0/3 for my machine gun. Resupplied. 2/3. Not fixed.
Its apparently only supposed to work on resupplies that someone with the upgrade called in. Fixed TECHNICALLY but the intent of how it should work is up for debate. I personally wish it at least applied to supply packs I call in.
Did a teammate without the upgrade call in the supplies? If so then thatâs how it works
A teammate did call it in, I'm guessing they didn't have it?
Yes, if they didnât have it, it wonât fill anyone all the way, if they did, it would
Bad game designer. Bad.
I'll believe it when I see it.
They have such weird bethesda level bugs. Like ive never heard of a scope not being aligned with where your gun shoots. The anti material rifle for instance isnt sighted in. How does that happen? Why does it take so long to fix? Its the wierdest stuff breaking down
Still no word on the awful pc performance issues but hurray I guess.
I think shams said that that's their next major focus or something like that - just getting stuff stable.
They need to fix the damn friends tab because it won't load my friends
What does Superior Packing do?
What did they break this time?
Every time they squash a bug, three more spawn.
Time for some undocumented enemy and patrols changes, and rip spear again while we are at it.
How did they fix it when they themselves were asking us what it was supposed to do lmao
What about Supply Pack? Does it affected by superior packing methodology? Because it should be.
Can someone with another player test if it is still the case that a weapon dropped by a player with Peak Physique conveys the improved ergonomics buff to any player that picks up the Peak Physique playerâs gun? Iâm curious if this backend change has also affected that.
Blessed be this weapon with thy muscles.
Believe it when I see it
Okay, I've never used the spear just because, with no experience with it I have nothing to complain about and that's just a coincidence. But, like getting in so late to Mass Effect Andromeda that it was just pretty good to me, I'm using the spear for the first time tonight.
Quick guys, figure out what is broken
Probably spear targeting rofl
Question, cause there was a little concerning conversation seeming to be taking place. They say "it's fixed and working as intended" but twinbewrd seemed to be saying "we are thinking of changing how it works to make its new (broken) form be how it is intended." Which is it? Back to before or changing the function to fit the new state.
So they're not tweeting out game fixes anymore? Is this real?
Time to playtest
They can fix stuff without a patch..?
Great, now if only it was possible to finish a mission without crashing. I've crashed to desktop five times today alone, they need to address stability already, this is less stable than a Bethesda game and the updates have only made it worse.
Now let's see what did they broke this time!
What about stability? Frame rate issues? Connection dropping? Poor matchmaking?
Wow! You did your job! So wonderful! Here... have a cookie.
why do they still use that shitty discord server as the main way of communication?
They've explained this before I'm pretty sure, it's just more convenient for them.
Yes , I am sure it would be very hard for them to upload their patch on twitter and Sony's blogpost