Games

Hey ChatGPT, code a new island!

players? you mean marks

I own something from that. I tried running it once and it would barely load. I gave up. Didn’t try again even on a new pc

But you don’t “need” to unlock them all on the day of release, there is no FOMO component, they don’t disappear after a month.

And if you play enough to unlock them faster than they can get them out, you definitely have the time to grind the 1000SC to unlock them.

Have to disagree. The war bonds have been some of the easiest to pay with in game currency compared to games like cod where their cod points feel next to worthless.

If you are netting very few credits per hell dive, you may be playing with those that don’t need them or playing bots, or a newly released content. Farming on level 1 will often get you with like minded folk, especially before a war bonds release. Farming is quick when you realize you don’t have to extract, just abort to ship.

1000 super credits are easily farmed just by doing missions. Do low level missions, race to the poi's with the car, rinse repeat.

Fun? No. But you said farming so this is it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

By just playing the game for little over a week, so no farming, just playing, i've gathered 700 sc.

The medals are easily gathered doing level 5 and up missions and completing your personal orders. And taking part in the majors of course.

Ignoring the part about the super credits and fomo stuff, the money confuses me. Is regional pricing so different that you're paying an additional $10 AUD compared to US and EU pricing? Additionally, $25 AUD as a full day's income? Even a low hour, part time job earns way more than that. I feel like your situation might not be financially compatible with buying things like that, I'd cheat or pirate if it's that important to you. $10 USD is not much for DLC, and while I strongly dislike purchasable gameplay mechanics in games, it's supporting the continued development and it isn't egregious. $10 is a burger, or a coffee, and I'm saying this as someone well below the poverty line.

I am not a game dev and do not have a stake in this personally but also dislike the 'lazy or incompetent dev' line that gets used sometimes. While ALOT of games seem to be made with really shitty code, with a game that seems as complex as Helldivers 2 adding a new feature can be a lot more complex than expected.

First there are non-technical factors: bosses that might not want to implement the feature and needs to be convinced, the devs might not know how to implement it and need to do research which takes time, artists that need to be added to the pipeline for assets, budget or other financial concerns (management might not think the feature will contribute to revenue), or even something like petty internal politics.

One the side of technical problems there is combinatorial explosion where adding ONE feature means thinking about how it interacts with all the other features. There is the problem of possible technical debt where you might inherit bad code from previous devs that you need to change before you can add anything. There is also the problem that the feature might not be technically feasible; remember that a game has only a fraction of a second to do its calculations and display them to the player while also checking for player input. This does not even begin to consider the problems caused by being a multiplayer game with possible network problems.

On the discontinued engine, the studio founder said that they were already in development of Helldivers 2 when it was discontinued according to the Wikipedia article.

I don’t think the game engine has anything to do with it. The common criticism against Helldivers 2 is that there should be more enemies, biomes, weapons, missions etc.

Adding a new enemy isn’t easy work. People think it’s just dragging a new 3D model to the map and then it’s done.

First it needs to be planned. It must be conceptually different from all other enemies so people don’t complain about that it’s just a copy paste reskin. Then it must be developed, which includes code, modeling, animation and sound design - all working in tandem.

And finally it must be tested and tweaked to ensure it mechanically works with all other systems in the game, like other enemies, weapons, missions, etc. Maybe during testing they realize it’s not as fun to play as they imagined, so they have to go back to the drawing board and iterate. Each iteration can affect code, modeling, animation and sound design. However, all involved aren’t just waiting in standby for feedback from play testing. They’re currently working with 100s of other things at the same time.

And then after a month of work they realize it’s never going to mechanically work, and they have to start from the beginning with a new idea.

Then repeat all of the above until they find something that actually works. This could easily amount to 6 months of work.

Sure, larger businesses have more developers to get more work done. But there comes a time when throwing new developers at a problem convolutes the process and actually slows things down more than it helps.

Something that seems simple to you like a flashlight attachment may not be so simple under the hood.

Solo indie devs have an advantage because they're familiar with all of the code. They're the ones that wrote it.

They don't need to learn a new part of the code when making fixes or changes. They don't need to explain to another dev that "you don't change how this information is passed in here because you'll need it to look just like that in some other section that you'll never touch".

Additionally any decisions/changes/etc. are all decided by one person, no need for meetings to get everyone on board and explain exactly what you want to do. No need to try to get everyone to understand your vision for what you want to happen.

A famous comic might explain this process a little better:

Sounds to me like you're not considering that they likely have a massive list of priorities to address and a flashlight attachment is simply not even close to the top of the list.

Nothing exists in a vacuum.

“Our software is a bloated mess” is not the defence they think it is.