this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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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?
The defense rates aren't static. Enemy forces have weaker resistance as a planet's liberation progresses. We saw this demonstrated in the recent dark fluid missions where this modifier was scaled a bit more heavily than usual as the entire community was focused on a single planet. It results in a bit of a snowballing effect, where it's initially very slow to liberate, but then picks up speed very quickly.
Of course, Joel could be putting a finger on the scales, too. But I feel like whenever they give us a choice like this, they seem to leave that choice and the consequences of it entirely up to us. They tend not to give us choices at all for the things that play into the bigger narrative, which this mission doesn't really appear to be.
74.4k people on one planet and its liberation dropping is pretty noticeable. Somehow in less than 12 hours the liberation progress was able to basically swap. I am not saying that there is definitive proof that AH is manipulating the numbers, and I agree with you for the most part, but surely you can agree the timing is rather convenient for some good press?
Especially after the player count dropped by more than 250k, probably due to the Sony Account debacle, and now they're catching more heat from their official Discord mods going on a timeout/ban spree on people who vomit reacted to furry art.
Certainly I'd like to think it was all for good fun, but the timing is too convenient and IMO it kinda poisons the waters for the good feeling. Donating to charity is good, but they could have done that without "giving the players the choice," so why didn't they? Were they really not going to donate to charity if that MO somehow failed?
I'm pretty sure the charity donation wasn't planned. If it was, that's an awfully small donation for what would've been a big community event. If they had planned this, I'm sure they would have actually partnered with a charity and encouraged players to donate or something, to have had an actually meaningful contribution.
I feel like you're looking too deep into this. This looks more like the CEO just having a laugh with the community. Not everything is a conspiracy.
Does everything need to be cynical and awful all the time?
No, I am only saying that in this particular case it is very convenient for AH and Sony for this to be happening, and in my opinion it seems like this instance was a PR stunt for some good press when the game needs it.
Multiple people are calling out that the mine planet wasn't at 80% liberation while the child planet was at 45% - are you sure you didn't check another planet by accident, or otherwise mix up your numbers?
If you just take a look at the memes the community made you'll see that they're all focused on Helldivers saving the kids, which is further evidence that you might've gotten the numbers wrong.
EDIT: I haven't used this website before, but this dashboard shows that marfark was at 0% liberation until yesterday. I'm pretty sure you've gotten your numbers wrong initially. I think when you checked and the planet had 74k players, the liberation had RISEN to 39%, which is supported by the dashboard plot of marfarks liberationb& the timestamp of 2024-06-15T02:45:04Z shows 76k active players and around 40% liberation, steadily rising up from 0 before.
why would they need to force the game outcome to get the PR win? They could donate anyway and give a snarky tongue in cheek message about the players choosing the mines.
The game outcome is practically irrelevant