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We all have our personal preferences, as with any other thing in life, and that is completely fine. However, there is no denying that some things are universally more popular. In Helldivers 2, many players prefer fighting bugs to fighting bots, and even though there are some explanations for this phenomenon, no one can tell what the exact reason is. The community has fought over this problem many times. One devoted Helldiver might have solved this mystery.
One Player May Have Figured Out Why Bugs Are More Popular Than Bots
Since the Escalation of Freedom update, the number of botdivers has been slowly growing, but the number of bugdivers is still vastly bigger. Sometimes there will be more bugdivers even during a Major Order on the Automaton front. Some of the common reasons are “Automatons are too hard”, ragdolling, “bugs are just more fun”, there are better weapon options to fight Terminids, etc.
One diver, Eidomancer, managed to pinpoint why many players subconsciously prefer bugs. This player noted: “Bots function by taking away what players have. It’s that what they do, how they work, is a negating philosophy rather than a transformative one”.
If you think about it, Jammers will take away your Stratagems. Gunships and Tanks are simply immune to most of the players’ attempts to take them down. The OP explained: “This is a negating philosophy – the bots simply block you from doing what you normally can”.
On the other hand, what do the bugs do? They add more to their own abilities, instead of taking away players’ resources. Anything from Stalkers turning invisible, over Hunters leaping, and even the extra armor on the Chargers, is something that is added to bugs, not taken away from the players. The OP stated: “This is a transformative philosophy – the bugs give themselves abilities”.
Helldivers 2 Players Realize Why They Prefer the Bugs
This observation triggered a lightbulb moment for many Helldivers 2 players, as they slowly realized what made them pick bugs over bots. We have to agree that this idea put things into perspective, and gave quite a simple explanation.
One Redditor, i_tyrant, stated: “Transformative enemies are more fun to fight than negating ones. I do think negating tactics have their place, but they should be rarely employed – done as a “s**t just got real” moment, and I think HD2 employs them way too often to benefit from that. Making it frustrating instead of dramatic”.
Of course, some players think that this makes the bots a more interesting faction. Dhdd1 noted: “As I’ve played this game more and more I find I actually like the bots a bit more just because they have a lot more complexity to them. The bugs outside of a couple of units just charge at you to try and overrun you with numbers”.
This whole theory is aside from players’ general preferences, as some players love fighting bugs just because they are squishy. Again, that is perfectly fine, but this theory might have given those players unsure of why they preferred bugs an explanation. We are botdivers through and through, except for the Major Orders, but still, it’s cool to understand why the bots can be frustrating.