I think their approach to team killing is part of why the user base is so forgiving of team killing.
It is included in the training and baked into the game play by having generous respawn limits. There are jokes about it baked into the promotional materials. Everyone expects to be team killed on accident, so people tend to assume any team killing is accidental. People who might otherwise team kill on purpose will either get their fill through accidents or will not get immediate reactions that feed their trolling.
So by keeping the team killing in the game they have also defused a lot of possible trolling while also having people just accept it as part of the game, especially when non-player initiated features like turrets and backpacks are the worst offenders for team killing.
Finding it funny is a great approach, kudos to the devs.
If I accidentally carpetbomb my squad I am always quick to reinforce out of guilt 😬
I 100% will team kill my friends if its funny in the situation and expect it in return.
The randos just can’t avoid walking into my mines and I feel bad about that one, but they do glow red.
Every time.
Either that or the bugs just wander through and only 3 die.
Yesterday I saw a guy step on a bot mine, then another teammate went to see what happened and stepped on one. Then on the reinforce they both went back for their stuff… but at least the mines were clear after!
When I first started playing with my brother, I was shocked to learn that he was fuming for days when I called down an Eagle Airstrike on him. I thought it was hilarious at the time, but he was legit mad. Then after playing for a few weeks, he came to lighten up and realize that team killing is part of the fun.
But yeah, if you come from a game like PUBG where team killing is a mortal sin, it can be a bit of a shock to the system.
Tell that to the PS5 player who immediately booted me after he ran through my field of fire and died.
I immediately re-enforced him too.
Hard not to take it personally. feels bad man
Last night I was the last survivor of my squad with no reinforcements left. I was trying to run to the evac shuttle. 3 giant bugs killed me, ending the mission. One guy told me to kill myself all in caps and to delete the game and he hopes I get banned and then they kicked me from the party. Not a super experience.
I don’t like to team kill on purpose, but I do think it’s very funny to drop an orbital J U S T outside the range of my friends occasionally to keep them on their toes.
Sometimes their toes are the only thing left of them.
(It helps that I only play with IRL friends and only with VC so I can warn them. But you know how it goes, you don’t always hear the warning even over VC.)
I had a few matches when I first started where I was purposefully (no enemies around) killed right before extract. It hurt them as much as me, so I don’t get it, but it was frustrating. Other than that, yeah I assume it’s accidental. At higher difficulties no one is doing that as far as I’ve seen.
Isn’t friendly fire one of the main selling points of the game? The satire of negligence and disregard for the lives of their forces from higher ups is/should be one of the themes of the game, imo
The game is made by the people who made Magica. Helldivers 1 was also full of friendly fire. Of course they stick to what works. Being careful around teammates is 50% of the gameplay, with the other 50% being what happens when someone throws a jellied gatling on a flat terrain when you are surrounded.
I played some Magicka with my partner and they really enjoyed it, which is awesome because I remember cherishing that game when it was new.
Somehow, it’s piqued their interest in Helldivers, which is a weird but welcome progression in my books.
Well, the difficulty of the game is a huge barrier to some people. Magicka was made with friendly fire / fucking around in mind, Helldivers is for 100% cooperation and “tryharding” with occasional moments of silliness
That’s why I was so surprised when I got kicked last night after a single FF incident 25+ minutes into a mission
I was finishing calling in something that ended with ➡️, which happens to also be the grenade button, which is what I unintentionally threw at the dude’s feet. He dies and I go back to orbit like that lol
Yeah, I don’t want ff off. it’s a challenge sometimes to not kill friendlies with a mortar or when they run in front of my line of fire. I think it fits the theme too well to not be part of the game.
You would expect a lot of FF incidents from the minimal training helldiver’s get before being dropped.
I haven’t played this game, but usually the issue with FF being on in multiplayer games is that there are a million little trolls out there that love to kill their teammates. That’s not realism, it’s just annoying.
Helldivers isn’t a competitive team based shooter. It’s a 4 player mission based co-op game. Friendly fire is core to the game design. Using a powerful weapon comes with a risk of killing yourself or team mates. And death, in that game, is also important. It’s not much of a punishment, but it does give risk.
Most servers with FF on in games I’ve played will kick after a certain number of tks and then eventually kickban.
That’s good then, unless it’s a genuine mistake. Getting banned from your game just because you suck isn’t very fun. But it’s not fun playing with someone who consistently sucks either.
I play the game religiously and I have come across exactly one idiot who TKed on purpose. FF is 99.99% accidental.
Many cases they are somewhat justified as the team desperately tries to stay alive and drop stratagements (close air support) anywhere from “danger close” to “broken arrow” (“I pray this kills the towering insect trying to eat us”). Sometimes you also lose awareness and walk into a teammates stratagement, sometimes your call out falls short of where you intended (or bounces back straight to you). So hilarious accidents occur regularly.
Without this, the game wouldn’t be the same at all. There is an odd military realism in a somewhat cartoony Starship Troopers-esque game that really gel very well together.
I understand “danger close.” I was in the USN. The term “Broken Arrow,” is generally used to describe a “lost, missing, or misplaced” nuclear weapon.
What does Broken Arrow mean in this context? Are you literally dropping a nuke on your own heads? If so I would use the term Tango Uniform
I haven’t played Helldivers, but I feel like that would be like turning off friendly fire in Mech Warrior Online. There’s a reason that you take penalties for shooting friendlies. That reason is rule #3, “always know what is behind your target.” or frequently in this case, in front of your target.
Honestly it would be weird if you turned it off. Like a completely different game, and not as good. It’s integral to the gameplay. You gotta check where everyone is before you drop the bombs. Or maybe the situation is beyond that point, and you just need to kill some bugs and cross your fingers for the next life. That’s the game.
This is the same dev that made Magicka as their first game. Friendly fire is part of their company culture and it makes better multiplayer games.
