I'd like to address the issue of griefing that's plaguing "high-level" ARAM matches. It seems like every other game, there's at least one player who intentionally ruins the experience for everyone else.
These people get triggered over the smallest things, some examples from my last games include them not getting the preffered champion, enemy team having champions that are annoying to play against, you not playing the way they want you to, or even someone simply picking exhaust. They know that they will go unpunished so almost all of them openly snitch on themselves in chat typing stuff like "ok now i troll", then they proceed to intentionally die or afk between towers acting once in a while like they're participating.
I exclusively play ARAM so i often find myself in matches with the same pool of players and sometimes i can recognize names of individuals who have repeatedly griefed in previous games, yet despite numerous reports they continue to play (and do the same shit over and over again) without consequence. I've never received a notification that someone was penalized for griefing after reporting them.
I understand that it's harder to get punished in ARAM since it's considered a "fun" game mode, but these players are blatant in their behaviour and either openly admit to griefing in game chat or attempt to hold you hostage in champion select.
We need a more efficient system for identifying and banning griefers within the ARAM player base.
TL;DR: ARAM is overrun by griefers who openly admit to trolling and face no punishment. This is especially noticeable for those who mainly play ARAM. This needs to change.

If you were lucky enough to catch the big fixture on the weekend, you’ll know that the Premier League is now over. I finished a disappointing 3rd from last in my FPL league and need some good luck for next season, so have decided on a M&W inspired team name.
What do you recommend?

Dramatic title, but I can't really explain it that well in few words. I also couldn't figure out a Subreddit that this would fit on, I think this one is best.
This one's a long one. TL;DR at bottom, but some details are important.
A bit of backstory first.
I'm a recently graduated HS Senior, headed to university in Fall. Around March, I applied to work at a mid-sized stadium in my area for a summer job-- I have about 2 years of stable retail experience, plus ServSafe certification and some good credentials outside of that. I've left almost all my jobs on good terms and I do my work fine. Never had any complaints.
I am a black woman. That is relevant to my story. I also have a very "white-sounding" name. For the sake of my privacy, let's say it's Sarah McIntyre. It's got the same vibe. I also have a "white-sounding" voice, especially over the phone. A lot of my family pokes fun at it, and it's not a huge deal.
So, I'm applying to this job, and the online application is pretty sparse. Few questions about my experience, age, and contact info. Nothing about my race at all. I apply, get a request for a phone interview, and hop on a call a few days later. My manager loves me. We have a great interview. She emails me a day later and says I got the job, and my orientation is in a week.
Orientation goes on, it's in a pretty large group and she doesn't address any of us directly or even ask for names, but I noticed her giving me a bit of a weird look. I figured it was about my hair which is dyed bright green so whatever.
We start working, and she's just very weird to me the whole time. Gives me weird looks, doesn't answer my questions, always watching me while I'm working at the concessions register. She doesn't do this with any of the other girls there. Concessions is about five other girls, all around my age. All of them are first-years at the stadium.
I get ready for work the next day, and I get a call from my Manager:
"Hey, OP. Don't come in today." "Oh? Is the game called off?" "No. Someone else is covering you. Bye."
Which was incredibly weird to me, honestly. But I wasn't going to press on the issue-- it was the first shifts of the season, maybe she wanted to train someone else instead of having me work. After this, there was about a month and a half gap between my next shift, which was May 9. Then I have another May 11; both go fine.
Manager posts the schedule for the next few weeks, up until June 9. I have one single shift. One. A four-hour concessions shift. I was insanely confused by this-- it's the start of the season with home games almost every single day, and multiple events with huge crowds. I texted the other girls I work with through our scheduling app and asked what their shifts looked like-- 3 to 5 shifts every week, about six hours each.
I was seriously wracking my brain for 3 days straight trying to think why on Earth I got the short end of the stick. I show up early and leave late every day, I help out as much as I can, customers don't complain, I'm experienced with the register and with counting tender, my co-workers and I get along fine, I've never had any issues with anyone.
The only thing I could seriously think about was my race. Which feels very cheap and victim-y, but it was the only thing I noticed that was an outlier. Out of every single employee at our stadium, I am the only person of color. Maybe somebody else is a minority, too, but they're incredibly white passing if they are. The only other brown people are the baseball players, which aren't on our staff team-- they're a separate entity entirely.
But that's all I can think of-- and my manager wouldn't have known about my race until she saw me for the first time at my first shift. And it's kind of difficult to have all-white staff considering we are in the suburbs of Chicago. Most people in our area are Black or Latino. It's seriously a considered effort to have an all-white staff in this area. I think I may have just slipped through the cracks because my name and voice are very misleading? But I can't tell if I'm overreacting or not-- I haven't said anything to my manager.
I don't want to quit because my coworkers are really nice, and I love the job. It's great being outside and being in a fun and fast environment like a stadium. But I'm trying to save for university and that's difficult when I don't work at all. Plus, I don't wanna give my labor to someone who despises me.
Am I overreacting in this situation and getting ahead of myself, or is this actually something worth looking into? Please help me. And yes, I know that it's very overdramatic to make things about my race-- this is genuinely the first time I've had to consider this with an employer.
TL;DR I'm the only minority at my job and I get barely any shifts while my white coworkers get more. I don't do anything wrong and I have lots of experience in similar roles. Should I look into this more, or get over myself?

Introduction

Hello fellow Helldivers. My name is Elliot, alias TeGoRE, a player with 155 hours on the game and plenty of experience gathered from 3rd party sources, especially Reddit and YouTube. I primarily play on difficulty 7, so this post will be biased specifically towards that difficulty.
As you all may know by this point, a lot of people are upset with the Automaton faction, its issues, balancing, bugs, etc. In this post I will be attempting to bring awareness to specific issues rather than asking for vague and general "fixes" the faction would need. I will also be referencing the other faction currently present in the game, the Terminids, as a point of comparison throughout the post.

"Fun factor" analysis; Loadout restrictions

I'll begin with what I believe will be the major point of discussion here. The automatons are just not fun. I understand this is a critical take, but please read before jumping straight to comments.
Let's compare the "fun" factor of Terminids to Automatons here. The Terminids allow you to run pretty much any loadout, while still letting you have impact on the game. You can run pure fodder clear loadouts with light penetration primaries and support tools and contribute to the mission that way, allowing your teammates to clear the heavies with ease. You can also run pure heavy clear with big bulky primaries and anti-tank tools, still contributing to the mission by destroying any charger and bile titan that comes into sight hence allowing your teammates to shoot the other fodder present without being spat on by a 400 ton oversized shrimp or being charged at by a walking rock. With both loadout cases you can also bring stratagems or change out your primaries and other tools (secondary and grenade specifically) that will allow you to have at least some impact on the heavies or lights, respectfully.
The Automatons don't allow for such loadout variety, and considering all the nerf barrages we've been receiving it's obvious that loadout choices are quite restrictive when it comes to fighting automatons. When was the last time you ran flamethrower against the Automatons? Any of the guard dogs? Any other sentry besides autocannon, EMS mortar or maybe the rocket sentry? Gas or airburst strikes? Light penetration or non-precision primaries? You get my point.
The faction requires a playstyle too specific for the casual player. You need to equip high precision weaponry (AMR, Counter sniper, Dominator, etc.) or medium penetration weaponry (Liberator penetrator, Counter sniper, Autocannon, etc) alongside way too many anti-tank tools. Sure, you can bring fodder clear, but the only realistic fodder is the regular troopers or the strider unit. Maybe berserkers. Only reliable (not saying it's the only viable one might I add) fodder clearer would be the grenade launcher, maybe the arc thrower. Furthermore, once on the actual battlefield, you can't necessarily play aggressive. Jump into a pile of bots and you'll be jumping back out limb-by-limb. You have to stay in cover, picking enemies one by one, slowly advancing forward. Then get all your progress denied by a bot drop :^)
We can then conclude that one of the contributing factors to why the Automatons aren't fun is the fact that it's too restricting and too sluggish. Let's look deeper, and analyse why your loadout and playstyle get so restricted;

Enemy analysis, its' contribution to the fun factor

The enemy types of the faction just do not let you vary your loadout enough.
Devastators specifically are the biggest issue. The regular devastator is well-thought out, a heavier bulkier unit with obvious weakspots and not too much firepower which could be compared to the hive guard in terms of mechanics. However, for the heavy devastator and rocket devastator, these are built to just bullshit you into dying. And good luck killing them if you have a light-pen weapon or generally don't have a longer-ranged or high-precision tool, as their primary body (excluding the abdomen) has enough HP to take three full counter sniper magazines (I do not know how a rocket devastator managed to do that, but it did) and just shrug it off. I don't think I need to talk about heavy devastators, they've been brought up enough... I will just briefly skim over it. They're too accurate. "Suppressive fire" does nothing to them. Their 70%-body-covering shield can eat anti-tank projectiles no problem. Sometimes a pack of devastators can be more devastating (badumtss) than a pack of hulks, depending on what devastators they are. If the "heavy" unit of a faction gets outperformed by common enemies, it's an obvious issue.
Another obnoxious enemy type is the berserker. As the name implies, they're a rage-crazed bot with only one directive: charge at you and kill you, no regard for its personal being. Which would be fine if they didn't have the health pool of a damn tank. One unit alone can eat an anti-tank projectile. And they typically spawns in packs of 4. Their weakspots don't even count as weakspots from what I can personally tell, shooting them in the head or the abdomen does about the same damage as just plain out shooting them. They're hard to kill at their core, and if they're backed up by support fire from the other enemy types behind them, you're pretty much helpless.
The rest of the enemy units are fine, in my opinion. They're well thought-out, with obvious counter-measure mechanics.
Hulks can be compared to Chargers. Heavy, tanky units at first, but mechanic rich enough to be an easy take-down once you figure out what you're doing. They have a giant heatsink which is where you have to shoot at regularly to take them out reliably. Not a weakspot might I add, just a point which you can shoot. Think Charger's butt. If you're a space cowboy shooting their tiny faceplate with anti-tank, or even medium penetration tools, can kill them as well. Lastly, just pumping them full of anti-tank projectiles (typically 2 rockets from any of the support weapons) will take them out just fine. There's other cool tricks you could pull off, such as throwing impact grenades between their feet, making them land behind the hulk, which would then take it out in 2 impact grenades if done right. Thermite grenades also deal a lot of damage to their legs, which can take them out too. Lastly, their arms can just be plain out shot off with the right tools. In conclusion, they are threatening at first, but once you use your brain to figure out its weakness, you're going to shrug them off.
Factory Striders are the Bile Titans of the Automatons. They are a bit less obvious but can still be handled decently well by a complete newbie. 2 miniguns on the front, shoot them off with medium penetration for easier kiting. Rocket the top cannon off for further success. Their big exposed abdomen is the obvious weakspot anyone can figure out. Shoot it enough and it'll die. For the more experienced, the front panel eye alongside the opening vents can also be points of advantage. Oh also can we talk about how they're a giant walking factory? Just bomb that bitch! 500kg, orbital precision strike, a regular airstrike, etc. It's a giant target just BEGGING you to throw stratagems at it.
Striders are simple as well. Big impenetrable front plate, completely exposed sides and back. A baby could do it!
Troopers are just fodder. Shoot 'em, they fall over.

Issue with dropships

If you played at least a few hours on the automaton front, you may know that the dropships can be shot down. However, when was the last time you saw that actually do anything?
The explosion deals too little damage, only sometimes killing the trooper units it's carrying. The body of the dropship itself seems to do no impact damage on the automatons, but loves to damage the shit out of you. The automatons also don't seem to care when they fall down 50 feet. Especially dropships with tanks. Shoot them down at the highest point of their drop, tank flies down at crazy velocity, lands with literally 0 damage to itself, then the dropships smacks on top of the tank doing fuck-all to it.
Oh and you can't forget the fact that the debris is solid cover FOR THE BOTS. You can't shoot through it. They can. They can also walk through it, you can't. ??????????

Issues with Automaton-specific side objectives

I will only bring up the ones that have actual issues behind them. If it isn't brought up here, then I personally believe it is fine.

• SEAF SAM Site

Barely does it's job. Shoots down one dropship per reinforcement, and as we learned earlier shooting the dropships down doesn't even do anything to begin with. Often times the rockets hit terrain as well. Completely pointless side-objective.

• Stratagem Jammer

Add some sort of indication to the spectating players when the person they're spectating is inside a jammer field, and therefore cannot reinforce them. Too many posts about too many people getting kicked for not reinforcing when they literally cannot.

• Mortar emplacement

WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY oh my god SHUT UP!!!!

Bugs (not the Terminid kind)

The faction is riddled with way too many bugs, which just suck the fun out of it. Bots shooting through obviously solid cover, bots seeing you from across the map / through cover and then calling reinforcements, their seemingly 50/50 resistance to explosive damage, then other misc bugs not worth addressing.
This obviously drives people away. A terminid can't shoot me through a rock, I'd prefer fighting that terminid.

Conclusion of analysis; Solutions, final thoughts

The Automaton faction enemies & its mechanics at its core are fine, most enemies making complete sense. Most mechanics, while rich in function, are not very obvious. To play the faction well you need to invest some time into learning how it works. This deters the casual player back to the terminid front, which is a bit more brainless, requiring you just "hurr durr shoot bugs". Here's some solutions to consider:
Rework the devastator enemy type, specifically its specialists types:

• The rocket devastators shouldn't be able to spam their rockets as much as they do. I'd much prefer a larger barrage with a longer cooldown.
• Heavy devastators shouldn't be pin-point accurate if you're not moving / moving slowly. They do spread their shots out if you're moving, but it doesn't contribute all that much, you will still most likely take at least some hits. They're carrying a machine gun and shooting it from their hip with seemingly 0 precision. How is it that accurate?

The spawn rates of the specialist types could be reworked instead, allowing space for the default devastator instead rather than constantly spewing the specialist types. When was the last time you saw a dropship bring just normal devastators?
Please please please do something about berserkers. Lower their health pool. Maybe make the weakspots actually do something. Perhaps make them spawn less frequently if they're in the major enemy pool. Or, instead of that, make the packs smaller. They're a major ammo sink currently and by the time you're done killing them all the other enemies are already in your face.
Dropship crashes should actually do something. If I use up my support weapon's ammo to shoot down a dropship, I would want it to actually contribute to me destroying the bots, not just create a flashy explosion and extra 1-way cover for the bots.
SEAF SAM Site needs a rework of sorts. Make it always spawn on higher terrain, maybe buff its firerate (see actual SAM sites for reference), or keep the firerate as is if dropship crashes actually start doing something, instead improving its turn speed and lock-on speed. Primary issue is terrain though.
"oh yeah this spot is PERFECT for a SAM site!" said the seaf engineer after ordering it be built in a trench enclosed by cliffs from all 4 sides "what the hell is this" said the helldiver when stumbling upon it
Realistically speaking, the only people who perform well when fighting against Automatons are those who have tens of hours of experience on their belt alongside a team with similar skill level, using proper "meta" (god forbid) loadouts to properly counter the bot menace. The casual solo-queue player just crumbles.

Conclusion & Goodbyes

I may have missed some things, but I tried to grab everything problematic about the faction to the best of my ability. I will most likely not edit the post due to it already being gigantic. However any comments adding onto the post are obviously appreciated. :)
If you're here to find a tl;dr, don't bother. No way in hell I'm summarizing 11.5k+ worth of characters. Just read the analysis conclusion.
If you're here after reading everything above, thank you. I hope this was a fun read and brought attention to why you might not be having as much fun on automatons, maybe made you realize what needs to be done in order to counter the currently sluggish faction. I just hope I helped in some way.
If you're a developer, thank you for creating an amazing game. I've been in love with Helldivers 2 since the very start (upon finding it reaching sky-high popularity), enjoying every hour of gameplay. But just like with any game, it has its flaws, and I hope these are properly addressed. The community has been asking for changes, and I hope my post brought awareness to it.
Buh-bye!!!

Attention All Aspiring Pro Gamers (in MENA)!
If you or anyone you know plays League of Legends, Valorant, CS2, or Apex Legends, and you are a Masters player or above, please reach out to me!!
My name is Omar “Raks” and I am an aspiring Esports Team Manager here in the UAE with a educational and business background in Esports. I would love to recruit some players to compete in amateur tournaments to start, then trying out for qualifiers for the big stage! Team name and logo is decided on already so we can just recruit and start practicing!
I would find and sign us up for the tournaments, organize training and transport, as well as be your liaison for whatever needs you have 😊
I would love to discuss more in DMs, Discord, or in person!
Please reach out if you have any questions and/or are interested.

Attention All Aspiring Pro Gamers (in MENA)!
If you or anyone you know plays League of Legends, Valorant, CS2, or Apex Legends, and you are a Masters player or above, please reach out to me!!
My name is Omar “Raks” and I am an aspiring Esports Team Manager here in the UAE with a educational and business background in Esports. I would love to recruit some players to compete in amateur tournaments to start, then trying out for qualifiers for the big stage! Team name and logo is decided on already so we can just recruit and start practicing!
I would find and sign us up for the tournaments, organize training and transport, as well as be your liaison for whatever needs you have 😊
I would love to discuss more in DMs, Discord, or in person!
Please reach out if you have any questions and/or are interested.

Visit the Wikipedia link given in the comments and head down to "political aspirations", read it and hope you understand.
To the people who are unaware, Ranjit is the CEO of RR and the chairman of the company that owns RR. He has been associated with RR since 2008. However, he did not bother to promote the game (or) the team in the North East of India till the year 2022. Once, he saw the team and brand peaking he took the opportunity for his selfish gains and moved the matches from Jaipur to Guwahati.
He is not bothered about promoting the game (or) the team. He is not bothered about the team, the management (or) the fans. All he cares about is money and that too for his selfish gains. He just wants to establish his name among the political clout.
Robbing away the pride of RR for selfish gains. It is high time for Manoj Badale and Co to boot Ranjit out.

Attention All Aspiring Pro Gamers (in MENA)!
If you or anyone you know plays League of Legends, Valorant, CS2, or Apex Legends, and you are a Masters player or above, please reach out to me!!
My name is Omar “Raks” and I am an aspiring Esports Team Manager here in the UAE with a educational and business background in Esports. I would love to recruit some players to compete in amateur tournaments to start, then trying out for qualifiers for the big stage! Team name and logo is decided on already so we can just recruit and start practicing!
I would find and sign us up for the tournaments, organize training and transport, as well as be your liaison for whatever needs you have 😊
I would love to discuss more in DMs, Discord, or in person!
Please reach out if you have any questions and/or are interested.

Attention All Aspiring Pro Gamers (in MENA)!
If you or anyone you know plays League of Legends, Valorant, CS2, or Apex Legends, and you are a Masters player or above, please reach out to me!!
My name is Omar “Raks” and I am an aspiring Esports Team Manager here in the UAE with a educational and business background in Esports. I would love to recruit some players to compete in amateur tournaments to start, then trying out for qualifiers for the big stage! Team name and logo is decided on already so we can just recruit and start practicing!
I would find and sign us up for the tournaments, organize training and transport, as well as be your liaison for whatever needs you have 😊
I would love to discuss more in DMs, Discord, or in person!
Please reach out if you have any questions and/or are interested.

Hi Eevies/EvTers/Evers!
Wanna vote but don't have time to watch ads? Not a problem!👌 Just participate in our Donation Drive and let the voting team handle the rest! 😎
However, if you do have time to spare, kindly help us with a few taps on your phone and vote! 😁
Here is a list of on-going voting campaigns and their current status:

Winnable Purely by Fan Votes 🤳

UPICK (Rookie Artist of May):

Deadline: May 23, 2024

App Name	Current Place	Opponent
UPICK	1st - 9,968,207 votes	2nd - 9,683,050 votes

We are currently on a 3-month winning streak for this award.
The first 3 months were Elisia, Gehlee, and Yunha (in order).
It's Seowon's turn this month.

KGMA Trend of the Year: Kpop Group (Monthly Voting - May):

Deadline: May 19, 2024 (just ended the other day)
In case you missed it, we won! 🥳
Based on the info given on the Fancast app, there is a chance that a monthly trophy will be awarded to UNIS.
Since I'm not sure 100% sure how this works, I suggest we wait for the official announcement from KGMA.👍
Overall current status (as per Fancast app):

1. Pre-voting (April) - 10% we lost 😢
   
2. Monthly voting (May-August) - 40%
   
3. May - 10% we won! 🥳
   
4. June - 10% save votes for this one!
   
5. July - 10%
   
6. August - 10%
   
7. Main voting (November?) - 50%
   

Great job, everyone! 😃👍

Includes Other Criteria 📊

34th SMA Rookie Award (Monthly Voting - May):

Deadline: May 31, 2024

App Name	Current Place	Opponent
PODOAL	1st - 326,200 votes	2nd - 77,700 votes
my1pick	1st - 49.26%	2nd - 40.45%
K-POP SEOUL	1st - 2,687 votes	2nd - 851 votes

Judging Criteria (as per last year's): 1. Professional judges and SMA Organizing Committee (50%) 2. Album sales (25%) 3. Mobile voting worldwide (25%) - monthly voting contributes to the main voting as per SMA's current front page notice.
As per F&F CEO, an extension of two more years will be considered if UNIS wins the "Rookie of the Year" award.
I have a feeling this is not the only one with an award of this kind though. Please comment below if you have information regarding other "Rookie of the Year" awards.

KM Chart (ROOKIE of May):

Deadline: May 24, 2024

App Name	Current Place	Opponent
Idol Champ	5th - 3.01%	1st - 58.97%
my1pick	5th - 19 votes	1st - 849 votes

Judging Criteria (according to KM Chart's website): 1. Voting (50%) - 25% on Idol Champ, 25% on my1pick. 2. KM chart data (50%)
This is a quarterly award, but it does give a physical trophy to the winner. It can motivate the girls if they get one.
Fan votes contribute as much as the chart data, but it's almost the deadline, so this may not be something we can win. Unless... 👀
Did I miss something?
If yes, kindly mention them in the comments so I can include them on my next update 👍. Thanks!

Team of the Season. What a name it has, and along with TOTY, we get to see some of most overpowered, yet well-deserved cards. However, it is as if EA is telling the users that its only intention is to make money. The only spark of brilliance it showed throughout the whole season was the Bayer Leverkusen TOTS upgrade SBC, aside from the absolutely disgusting pack weight (no Grimaldo or Frimpong to be seen). It's as if creativity costs them fortunes. New and original ideas are nowhere to be seen, and the company is still raking in insane amount of money.
With Serie A TOTS coming soon and probs ultimate TOTS after that, I wonder how many more boring SBCs and store packs they will release without any new content.
To sum it all up, FUCK YOU EA.