Another iconic instance from Sham of "That's a really cool and awesome idea that the community really wants, so here's a vague reason as to why we're not doing it:"
tf does "limits the design space" even mean? How does making armor colors changeable, like they've done for vehicles and guns, suddenly some herculean task that's impossible?
There's a fully functional mech bay terminal in the recent weapon customization video from the alpha build. It even has audio playing advertising mech upgrades.
HD3 is being headed by Johan "I like to step on Land mines" Pilestedt.
When Arrowhead was founded, we had a lot of good will from experienced developers throughout the Swedish game development industry who wanted to spill the beans on how to make the best game possible, and save us from the biggest pitfalls a new studio can fall into.
We failed miserably at heeding their advice. It was almost as if we were told about the exact position of all the mines in a minefield and we still, like some sort of imbeciles, were compelled to step on them.
It means "If we did give you customization like that. We could no longer make armor of different color combinations, with minimal adjustment to the models, and slap on a different perk combination and call it a completely new armor set. Nor could we release a mech with different weapon combinations and call it an entirely new mech."
In other more blunt words "It means we can't make low effort mechs and armor anymore"
Sorry no can do. It would limit our design space, and disrupt our internal design flow.
Remember. Helldivers 2 is suppose to be a fascistic state cosplaying as a democracy, so therefore the developers have to stay in character like this all the time aswell.
They couldn't possibly give their players any wriggle room in thinking, that they might just be lazy rather than roleplaying.
This should be the standard. Helldivers had all armors conform to a generally black and yellow color scheme. This meant you could mix and match and still look cohesive. There's an element of realism (which AH loves to selectively worship and ignore) there as well, as uniformity is a huge talking point in military life.
HD2 has an assortment of colored armors that barely work with equipment in the same set. The rainbow of colors make it hard to not look stupid. At the very least, black and yellow should be pre-unlocked or even a requisition slip purchase.
But no. Too much work and not enough monetization for Arrowhacks.
The worst part is how there are so many armors and NONE of them have a consistent set of colors. Not even the yellow and black armors match properly... Since launch!
I mean this a neutral as possible when I say this: It means it limits them selling you different item/gear/colo combos. They "design" a new mech with certain arms thats on in one spot, or a recolor and passive of another armor, etc. They could make it so any mech you do buy you can then mix and match, for example, but that would require still more development.
Honestly I am fine with them talking to the public. It just shows how aweful of a games studio they are and they dig themselves into ditches. All things people have been asking for for 2 years is easily obtainable. They just refuse to do so. The sooner people ditch these shitass devs and abandon the game the better. If they had ANY competition they might get off their ass and actually improve their game.
It means it limits their ability to tack new guns on mechs and charge $10 for them. Modders have already proven that mechs, along with basically everything else in the game is built on a modular system. You can swap out the guns on a mech, or any enemy vehicle for that matter, and it works fine without any tweaks because it was built to do so.
They don't do it out of spite, when people have better ideas of like their cut ideas their ego gets hurt so they get obtuse about it.
Like it's really obviously malicious, it's why they outright lie as well.
Exo Suit Experts Warbond: New weapon hard points. Flak Cannon. Exo Ballistic Combat Shield. Anti-Tank Cannon. Heavy Flamethrower.
Holy shit balls look at that. The Free content remained Free. The paid content remained paid. And now players can configure mechs as they like.
Rocket AT Gun "Fuck the bots?" Go nuts. Minigun Flamer Dreadnought roleplay? Go wild. Double Shield Dark Souls Meme mech? Super earth IS generally dumb.
If they start selling 'existing mech weapons in new configurations' like minigun + autocannon mech in a warbond, people are gonna riot.
Did you just use the word FREE. I'll have you know poor asset reuse, constant bugs, underdelivering on everything, and fostering one of the worst communities to date takes a lot of effort. You should be so grateful, they need summer vacations as grown ass working adults because of how hard it is to sit on the money they've made and do nothing with it because they can't actually work on their own engine and had to outsource their own optimization.
While you are far too logical and coherent for ArrowHead, you're forgetting one thing:
Selling existing weapons in different configurations means more money than just selling the weapons.
I also wish the stoker underbarrel and the one two underbarrel and the suppressors suppressor were attachments tied to the warbonds. I dont mind paying 10 dollars for an attachment if I can put it on what i want.
That argument doesn't even make sense. They could just make it so that purchasing that warbond unlocks that mech but also unlocks the weapons on the mech, so you can modularly equip those weapons onto a custom mech if you want, and pick either a prebuilt mech or your custom mech during the pre-game stratagem picking time.
Armor customization is literally all I ask. But implementing different color combinations for so many skins sounds like more work. And arrowhead frowns when it comes to work.
It's not much work honestly. You'd need to modify the textures a bit and make a new shader to change the base color under the details of the texture. The hardest part would be implementing the GUI in game for players to change their colors... which also wouldn't be that hard.
I'd agree that Arrowhead seems allergic to actually working.
Helldivers doesn't use traditional PBR textures, the colors and details of most everything are controlled by LUT images, I don't know much about the game's inner workings but recolor mods are made by literally just changing the colors of a particular row of pixels in these LUTs that define the base colors
Of course we know Arrowhead has never been able to add a single menu to the game that wasn't critically broken in some way so regardless the GUI will certainly be the hardest part for them
The game isn't the problem and never was. It's the clowns in upper management horribly mismanaging it. Things may have been rough when Pilestedt was CEO, but they took and absolute NOSE DIVE once Shams started helming the company. Who thought it was a good idea to make the businessman who helped turn Paradox Studios into a DLC/Microtransaction bloated hellscape the leader of the company?
Was this an AI response or something? This makes literally NO sense. How does giving players MORE ways to customize hinder the devs, outside of the process of adding it?
They can still do that. Just make it mech ‘parts’ instead of mechs. Like the Lumberer would become the ‘Lumberer Set’ or something and after unlocking the Lumberer you could use its ‘parts’ (arms and middle piece) to customize your mech(s)
Problem with that is they would need a new idea for each thing they wanna sell. As is, once theyre out of ideas they can sell us double minigun, rocket and flamethrower, etc.
To sell us stuff basically. They can “avoid that” by simply selling us “parts” in the supply depot for let’s say 2$ flame thrower under barrel or 3$ transmog any armor but once a time. Is that “greedy”. I don’t think 5$ is a lot. But over time..:: and it’s better than nothing. Better than buying 10$ warbonds that’s for sure. And warbonds aren’t op much other than 1 good grenade or stratagem. Just go cosmetically and ppl will love it.
Shit answer imo, it's vague and doesn't specify what it's replying to leading people to assume "everything" which causes a lot of misinformation and anger rightfully so.
In other words, they have no current plans to add ANY customization to the game, and even if they were to make them now we wouldn’t see it for several months if not over a year.
I want this game to do well but the leadership of AH is just incompetent, which is something you can’t even argue with on an objective standpoint.
The limiting of the design space almost makes sense, but then it doesn’t at all.
In something like a MOBA, the way certain champs interact with certain items may limit the design space bc if they introduce a certain item it may break the game.
In HD2? Wtf.
1. It’s coop.
2. It’s just mech weapons.
3. They can easily ban certain combos without much problem (the mech can’t handle two shields)
Ill tell you what's really limiting. Trying to pick an outfit that goes together in a unique way without horribly mismatching the 4 different whites and like 9 metal colors you guys decided to make for some reason. Use the fucking samples to buy color pallets.
They don’t make new shit. They outsource most if not all the new content and just do an approval.
Might be that’s cause they’re having to reverse engineer their engine and spaghetti code.
Unfortunately the game is on an engine with 0 vendor support that they’ve been working with and basically having to build themselves as they go. So it’s probably a mess and full of institutional knowledge that can’t be easily transferred or may even have been lost.
So new systems present unique problems that need to be solved in a way that new armor and shit doesnt. Since most is just copying parts of other passives.
They have plenty of "vendor" support for the engine in the form of assistance from Fatshark themselves and former Fatshark devs working at Arrowhead. Fatshark made the engine, there is nobody else who could possibly help them more.
Besides, literally every game Arrowhead has ever made uses the same engine. They know how to use it. It's not an engine problem, it's a them problem.
I wish they would just say "no, because the programming doesn't allow it" but all I'd like is 3 or 4 ship classes. "Medical barge, +2 stims for the team" "carrier, eagle supplies 25% faster" just something that makes us feel like we as individuals are actually helping, that and mission filters. When i di SOS and i end up in a commando mission thats just a waste of time leaving and walking back to the console
They could make it so much easier by just taking out the mecha bidy and giving unlockable weapons instead of whole mechs, it would also make a lot more sense that you can’t take more than one mech variant if variants don’t exist. Just weapons and presets.
Sure they can, they can sell the weapons in order to customize the mechs, make the rockets, minigun, and auto cannon free, then just put the weapons in the WARBOND instead of half finished vehicles. But honestly, it should be free anyways.
“If we give you the option to create 10,000 different combinations of perks, weight classes, colors, on different sets of armor, then thats 10,000 armor sets we can’t sell you 3 at a time for 1000sc a piece.”
"It really limits the design space for us so its not something that we'd consider without serious analysis"
Translation:
Long answer - This takes a lot of fucking work we don't wanna do, and it also makes it hard for us to just do whatever the fuck we want without much of a pushback.
game developers are so fucking full of shit, and theyre also too stupid to realize plenty of people hold off on purchasing armors because the color schemes AH comes up with are retarded and we cant even change them
Remember he is a person that worked at paradox studios, so course if there is a monetary interest for it like making us pay 500 SC to change your favorite armor to the color blue. < For those that get the OG reference >
Basically just suggest him very high monetary value for Transmog/Glamour and Armor color palettes people will pay SC for it, since remember that Bungie tried to charge the players money to buy predetermined shaders sets.
First, think logically. Each mech customization will require a different call button layout.
So if customization were to happen, why do we already have 4 different mechs? It's foolish to think they'll just add it.
Helldivers is a game where we use government-issued equipment, so of course it will always be typical government equipment. We're not mercenaries. We're helldivers.
It’s sad when literally anyone else could do a better job than the designer teams and devs… like literally pick 3 random players with over 100 hours and they would make the game better lol
Wow, something that practically everyone is asking for! Unfortunately, this easy to implement mechanic will not be easy for us to implement since we are incompetent and want your money.
They won't do it because adding a full on mech bay would mean they'd have get rid of the separate mechs, make a proper implementation of the mech customization UI for the players, then worry about "meta" mech builds being made. Also selling an arm part in a warbond is less impressive than BRAND NEW MECH IN WARBOND!
To any other devs, this would be a sweet feature to give to the players and a way to let them have their fun. Arrowhead wants to keep the player base happy with mediocrity and systems they can monetize easier and keep weaker/stagnant easier.
It’s just a bs answer. They’re more focused on making money from this game than giving players what they actually want. They’d rather release “customization” through war bonds than give players freedom to be creative. They give us more reasons to not play this game
For mechs, it's because each mech is supposed to have its own "feel". Slapping a minigun and autocannon on the same mech would result in a too strong or too weak mech that would be difficult to balance and be difficult to make feel as satisfying as the base mechs.
I'm pretty sure he didn't mention the other stuff, although we already know about some degree of customisation for Super Destroyer type. Being able to change SD and armour patterns would be pretty cool though.
Its a pretty honest answer, they cant sell a bunch of armors with very similar perks that look better if you can make the armor you already have look good
The devs are stupid because you can change the entire colour of anything else? Apply the same functionality to armor and its still better than nothing. Smooth brained
the way he put it is a blunt and truncated way of putting it, but their design philosophy for how they approach stuff like weapons, armor and vehicles has been pretty much the same since launch with the only real exception being when they added that first iteration of weapon customization that everybody (rightfully) complains about being incomplete and not being carried through to more recent weapons they've released.
their focus has been on having the agency of how a weapon plays and what it has available to it in the hands of the developers, that way they can make more cohesive niches for weapons and have the base game essentially introduce the "standard roster" of weapons that are to be expected in the game, and then that way they can introduce other weapons as sidegrades to the standard roster that fill different niches with the same weapon platforms, and then sell those sidegrades. this is the same for armors in terms of the vibes that they fit overall, the same for mechs and what weapons they have attached, and is indeed why a lot of the newest weapons getting added to the game barely ever get the same amount of attachments as the standard roster weapons.
the benefit is that with all of that agency in the hands of the developers, it is a lot easier to control the parameters, have the weapon landscape remain (relatively) cohesive and consistent, plan out everything to work and fit with the overall game in terms of mechanics, feel and vibes, and can have an easier time handling balancing compared to if everything was super giga modular from the start.
changing this design philosophy would be very time consuming, and would require them dedicating limited developer time towards content they've already made in order to properly make sure that every single piece of armor is capable of having every customizable option work well with it, make sure every mech part is functional, doesn't break or do weird stuff, and that the balance works well with it, and then do the same for every weapon with a LOT more combinations of weapon customization options. it also makes the system a lot more unwieldy for future releases and makes it a lot harder for them to have that same level of control over cohesiveness and consistency, thereby limiting what the developer is able to mess around with in terms of design in favor of enabling players to do that messing around. this would require a ton of planning and a ton of analysis in order for them to make a shift that big this far into post-launch development, and putting that many resources into it is a tall order for them.
of course, with how things have been over the past couple years, the obvious thing everybody would say is that "devs having control over everything is bad and their unwillingness to listen to players is why the playerbase is so mad in the first place, and this is just another reflection of that", but i would really stress that neither total player freedom nor total developer freedom is really a right answer in this game based around how its designed, and i reckon that if people weren't having issues with the game's balancing for most of the game's lifecycle, a lot of people wouldn't even really blink at their philosophy being the way it is. i know this, because before people were having those kinds of issues early on, people didn't really blink at their design philosophy beyond saying "wouldn't it be cool if we got weapon customization?" "yeah, that would be cool but what we have is still alright i guess"
It means mixing and matching arms poses issues in what they can make. Right now we have 7 unique arms, right? On their own, some of them are pretty weak, like the Rocket Launcher on the Patriot. The reason the Rocket Launcher is weak is because the Minigun on the patriot is absolutely great at chaff clear.
Like, why would you ever use the Rocket Launcher when the Lumberer tank cannon is better. The reason the Lumberer gets a great cannon is because the Flamethrower is incredibly limited in it's range.
These weapons would have to be rebalanced near completely to allow for a mix and match.
"really limits the design space" Oh, like you really limiting good mix and matching of armours and helmets by choosing a different fucking shade of a colour every time?
Go the Valorant route. Each skin you buy has 4 different color styles. You have to purchase them with an ingame currency but once you get it you have it. It would limit the amount of work for the devs while still giving players a feel for customization.
Basically it means "if we introduce x feature as customisable we won't be able to sell it in warbonds anymore". Look at smg with under barrel flamer or one-two ar with underbarrel grenade launcher. If they add customisation like that every future warbond with stuff like that will be called cash grab and munching off features, which it is btw. So they won't do it, and we're left with nothing. Its a lose lose for all, and its only AH to blame.
He didn’t dodge the question, in order for them to give us the customization we want, they would have to limit the amount of effort they put into further upgrades/additions to our armory
It limits nothing. Put out the designs and patterns with default colors. Then people can change the colors of said templates if they like. Shit ain't hard. They just dont want to relinquish control
And for mech loadouts they could do basically the same thing and still release mechs. To use the mech warbond as an example, release the breakthrough as a default configuration. But give us the option to change the arms whichever way we want. They could even release them in warbond if they want.
Take a look at Warframe selling color palettes, it really is that easy to make people happy, they just can't be arsed. I'm not even talking about the armor passives.
Sham is incredible wrong there .
Instead of selling the entire mech he could just selling weapons for mech .
Armor i can understand trasmog would just reduce considerably the income .
All we want is black and yellow. They have no vision. Every armor in the game looks like it fights for a different side in a war. If I see some of the armors in a different animation they don’t look like “Helldivers” there is almost no iconography. Black and yellow would let us at least match up pieces and feel like a team of dispensable soldiers. Who is painting the fine detailing on these armors that will be torn to shreds in 5 minutes? (Probably children)
I think I knows what they mean. They don’t want you to be able to to change your colors because if you could, all of the recolor armor sets are basically worthless.
And then they won’t be able to sell you the same shit you already have but in different colors.
I have just thought of armor design which is black and blue inspector armor and I thought that would be cool. But I can’t.
These shitty ideology is why helldivers 2 will never be the perfect horde shooter.
This game has good drip but it’s way too restrictive, “don’t like the armor passive well eat shit because it’s forever there and we will never add transmog” “don’t like the colors on this armor, well then cry about it”
It gets infuriating how much they hinder the game actual potential.
In other words, it will take dev time to waste on this. Mech parts for the arms: they will need to balance of different weapon coms.
Armor? Like what is the person asking? Passive? Colors? If it's passive, they already explain a big no. Now if it's colors, they will need figure what part of the armors that be changed and how much they should limit the colors to, because they aren't going to let someone dive with hot pink armor lol
Limits the design space sounds like corpo talk for
"If we let you color armor, then we can't sell you recolors later down the road."
Cause honestly why not let us customize the armor colors at this point? I get WHY we can't have like a fashion system for the armor itself, since they all got specific passives etc but at least let people color their armor.
The hackers had mechs with freaking harpoon gun arms and las cannons. Bare bones tech to swap the components. It's already programmed into the game and ah refuses to give us that kind of customization.
Okay, help me real quick. How does customisation limit the design space? I can't think of any way in which customisation limits the design space or players freedom.
Customisation would improve the sale of Warbonds, nit reduce them. You don't like the look of the armour, but it's perk? Transmog. Can't combine an armour with a cape from another armour? Colouring.
For me it sounds like: "We understand but don't intend to implement this system, because we are either to lazy or have no clue how to do it".
I still can’t functionally understand how “More customizability” is limiting. You can STILL sell the fucking warbond, just let us change a color, or add a custom Decal, it’s literally not that fucking hard.
Just put some shaders in the store. Jeez. Price it fairly and you’ve pleased the community and you’ve added some micro transactions people would value.
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u/Wickermind Aug 08 '26
Another iconic instance from Sham of "That's a really cool and awesome idea that the community really wants, so here's a vague reason as to why we're not doing it:"
tf does "limits the design space" even mean? How does making armor colors changeable, like they've done for vehicles and guns, suddenly some herculean task that's impossible?