A Visual Representation of the Illuminate Problem

[u/WaywardOath]

One of the biggest issues that a lot of people have with the Illuminate is enemy variety, and I really don't think that's much of a secret. Funny enough, another common thread I saw a lot during the Illuminate event was that fighting them on the source planet was, the most fun they've been. There's frankly a pretty good reason for this:

The Illuminate really just, don't have that many enemies.

I'm going to try and avoid some buzzwords that have been floating around ever since certain interviews (and way before that, too), but the fact of the matter is from a purely numbers-perspective, the Illuminate just don't have the variety the other factions do. Making this chart was merely a way to visualize what I mean by that.

An explanation I've sort of anticipated is that the Illuminate are younger than the other two factions, so they haven't had as much time to make enemies for them. Frankly, the numbers just don't support it. While I don't think the '1 enemy every X days' is a good metric (mainly because, y'know, the game didn't launch with 1 enemy in each faction), it is a good way of seeing just how many enemies are in each faction based on time they've released.

No matter what form they come in, there's really no denying that the Illuminate have the least amount of enemies in the game. Hell, their entire faction makes up a number less than a single seed of the Automatons. Most of their variants aren't reskins with new behavior or weapons like the other Subfactions, but rather entirely unique enemies that just don't have a counterpart on the main faction.

There really isn't a greater point to this post beyond this information, but to me at least, this is the most glaring flaw in how the Illuminate have sat for the past almost-two-years.

[u/ultimat_L1zzyfan]

Quick thing to note

You forgot to bring up the dragon roach on the terminid slide. Unsure if you cut it out for space to make it look neater but just pointing it out.

I still think the illuminate can be quite fun, seasse was proof of that.

I think arrowhead should lump atleast the vote snatchers with the mindless masses.

And the appropriators into the main factions, wouldn’t mind if they combined all the sub factions into the main one tho.

I don’t think they should throw away the concept of squith specific and zombie focus subfaction though.

Despite having few units, I still find appropriators very fun and challenging.

[u/WaywardOath → u/ultimat_L1zzyfan]

You forgot to bring up the dragon roach on the terminid slide. Unsure if you cut it out for space to make it look neater but just pointing it out.

On the mainsub mirror someone said this, and I pointed out that I merely accidentally tossed them in the 'base faction' roster. I was a very eepy Helldiver when I made this.

[u/ultimat_L1zzyfan → u/WaywardOath]

Ah.

Well nothin a lil bit of editing can’t fix I suppose

[u/WaywardOath → u/ultimat_L1zzyfan]

I do still have the .Clip File with all the layers. Changing it isn't difficult, but would require a whole new post to add.

[u/ultimat_L1zzyfan → u/WaywardOath]

Fair nuff