Helldivers 2 Community Chose to "Save the Children" Over Getting a New Weapon, So Arrowhead Donates to Children's Charity
Helldivers 2 Community Chose to "Save the Children" Over Getting a New Weapon, So Arrowhead Donates to Children's Charity
Interesting that they made it a choice. Typically the weapon or whatever is a reward for reaching X amount of donations. I respect it.
Not only is it a choice, it's a choice the community has had several opportunities to make and has failed each time, and it's starting to become a funny meta-story of its own at this point.
Operation: Legitimate Undertaking would be the first time we had to make this choice, and that choice was to unlock either the AT mines or a new rocket launcher. To unlock either, we had to liberate the planets where they could be manufactured, but for lore/game mechanic reasons, we could only save the factory workers on one of those planets, before the other one would ultimately succumb to invading forces.
To unlock the AT mines, we'd have to liberate several planets before we could even reach the destination planet to begin liberating it and we'd have cut it very close to the deadline (because absolute failure was the third option, if we couldn't liberate either planet in time), but the path toward the rocket launcher planet was significantly shorter. So the community banded together to liberate the planet with the rocket launcher, since that was at least a more easily-guaranteed victory. The AT mines would have to wait for another day.
The next time the AT mines would become available again was several weeks later, and the task to unlock them this time wasn't so much a "choice", as much as it was a challenge. Enter, Operation: Metallic Harvest. The task was for the community to collectively kill 2 billion Automaton units by the deadline. "Easy, in the bag", the community said to itself, as we had just come hot off the heels of a similar major order to kill 2 billion Terminid units, which we had completed well before the deadline. 2 billion kills? No big deal, those mines are as good as mine get it hah hah hah.
Unfortunately, this major order came just after the announcement that the previous major order was actually glitched and every player in a mission was getting points for every other players' kills, basically making it so that the progression was 4 times faster than it should have been. So our previous confidence was misplaced, and caused us to misjudge our ability to actually get 2 billion kills in time, resulting in a failure of this major order. Once again, the AT mines were put on hold.
That brings us to today, with Operation: Trolley Problem, where the developers are basically giving us the mines at this point, but it's of course still up to us to accomplish, where we have to once again choose which planet to liberate. Realistically, they could have given us any other explanation for what's happening on the other planet, and we could've had those mines. But the choice was mines, or children.
We're Helldivers. We're Super Earth's elite. You think we're really about to let suffering children die? No, we're the good guys, and at least half of chose children are of legal age to work in munitions factories, so saving those children means saving the future of democracy. Sorry mines. Maybe next time.
Honestly, I hope that the community continues to never unlock the AT mines. I want to be able to look back at this game in five years and see the storied history of all the failed attempts to unlock them.
I enjoyed reading that. Helldivers sounds like a fun game, and I'll be rooting to keep the mines locked forever now, too - no matter how much the children yearn for them.
Hey, here's an idea, talking about interesting community narratives.
Have you considered that the democracy might have been managed?
My bet, given how you budget for this type of PR stuff, is that it was basically the players picking the story that got told while they got a new weapon and a charity donation happened. Like if the players hadn't chosen to do so, there would have been some contrivance for someone certainly has to save the children. Since they saved them, now the children will get together and give you this thank you gift, or something.
Illusion of choice, but not in a bad way.
Link please?
That's awesome
"I'm doing my part!"
I mean, I wasn't logged in when it happened, but the two MOs were at 45% and 80%, with the children at 45% when I last checked less than 12 hours ago. So unless they somehow made up that big of a difference in under 12 hours, I don't think this is the case.
The more likely scenario is that the game itself probably forced a win condition on the children MO, despite the larger progress on the new weapon MO.
Idk, I saw about 3x the amount of active players on the Children planet.
Well the mines planet currently has 74.4k players on it and its liberation rate dropped significantly to 39%. So I think that is enough evidence, at least to me, to suggest that the game automatically applies buffs or debuffs to objective completion without any regard for player participation. Most likely under the guidance of AH employees.
Especially with all of the severely negative recent press surrounding Helldivers 2, Sony and AH wanted the easy W. And whats an easier W than rigging the outcome of player "choice" to be the morally correct one and it leading to a donation to charity for children?
What? The majority of bot players were on the children MO, Vernen Wells. I don’t think Marfark even progressed until MO players moved over.
Yeah, there was a reason why there was a ton of "save the children" memes...
I think a day ago it was 40% kids planet and 0% mines, but I didn't make it a point to remember. I want to say it was 7k players on mines, and 25k on kids.
That's what I remember, so I'm not convinced the other commenter posted correct numbers.
It was definitely the other way around. When I first checked the planets, there were around 1.5k divers on the mine planet and it was in the 0.x% range, while the children's planet was around 54% with close to 60k divers on it.
The weekend crew rolled in
I vote we give the children new weapons.
I think the public school system is doing just fine on that front...
The only thing that will stop a kid with a gun is another kid with a gun. /s
Because knowledge is power!!!
Child soldier strategem.
Smaller hotbox with same DPS!
I mean the children yearns for the mines
No, that's the cyborgs.
I vote we launch the children as weapons.
Why not both?
Orbital stroke strategem