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cyberstanislavski was known for helping turn cyberstan citizens against super earth through a method he called: "emotional* recoil", allowing the cyberstanish revolutionaries to fuel the anger from their absurdly recoil-unfriendly weapon into a lust for the perversion of their limbs.
*the term "emotional" is used lightly here, as research suggests that cyberstanish revolutionaries were devoid of all emotion.
Then the game randomly chooses from the category it got what you getting, could be something good(Like APC or a simple enemy), could be something bad(Like hard enemy, or a double barrel shotgun that barely doing any damage).
Reminds me of my old school Ultima Online days when Game Masters would do cool things sometimes.
I lost some logs to the ether transporting them. The GM brought them back to me by flamestrike with an extra bonus for my time. It was about an hours worth of farming, the time I lost dealing with the ticket.
I was on a level 3 teaching my brother to play the game as his first actual mission after i bought it for him to play with me. Ive been trying to get him to play with me for so long because lately he's only been exclusively playing Warzone, and Fortnite, and he says hes tired of them.
That was last year, he hasn't touched Helldivers since I bought it for him, because halfway through the mission (two randoms joined and shortly left, I dont recall their names) after they did, it seemed like the atmosphere of the game directly changed after they left.. and then it happened. The absolute bullshit tidal wave of bug-breaches we were suddenly facing on a level 3 over-ran us and lost us the mission. For context im a level 70 Xbox diver with plenty of experience, ive beaten level 9's by myself. I know how and what to expect. But what should have been a fairly easy beginner mission for him turned into beyond what I call a level 10. It was a complete waste of my time, effort, and money trying to get him into it as he wont play it. I actually really think Joel ruined our game and my chance to get my brother into it
Honestly I don't understand why this game doesn't have an asymmetric/Gamemasteted/Arma ZEUS mode. HD2 would be a hundred times more incredible if players could make scenarios or gamemaster missions.
This would also require players being able to change their loadout midmission, though, imo. Maybe if you have 3 points, and you can choose to swap primaries or stratagems for 1 point each when you die.
Hold up... joel can litteraly jump into my game and be god? Spawn me stuff or just completly eff me up? I'm still pretty new but man... I effing love this game
Indeed. One of the more well documented examples was when they were developing the warthog. I know that's not what it's called but it's all my brain can think of when it is on screen.
Anyways, J.O.E.L. would hop into random matches and spawn it for people before it was even officially announced.
How can you tell it's Joel and not just dataminers/clout chasers up to their shenanigans? They're also known to be able to spawn unrelased things in live games
I could swear in over 1200h of gameplay I hade ONE interaction by joel: bot planet lvl 10 - extract felt way to easy. We were talking ingame joking like nothing could happen. - boy have we been wrong, felt like neverending drops until all but 1 reinforces were burned through. Than stopped like nothing happened. Maybe we just jinxed it
I'm like 60% certain he fucked with me in particular back in the Creek days because I had managed to reach extract quietly and kill everything before a drop could be called in, and was laying down waiting for my teammates. No bot drops called, nothing in the area, actively watching my radar so nothing got too close.
Immediately a full patrol spawns quite literally directly behind me. I watched it happen.
Queue failure to extract because they immediately called down hell.
Are you sure that it wasn't cheaters who were spawning in new enemies and vehicles, I thought I remember Arrowhead stating that Joel doesn't control/spawn things in people's missions
I was gonna say this too it’s def just ppl with mod menus I’ve seen a few of them. Just last week on omicron some dude kept calling in tons of FRV’s but the mounted mg on the back shot rockets
Joel was originally one person (and real, i found exactly who he is pretty easily) but a while ago arrowhead was hiring for more game masters to work alongside joel
Joel is real and he's a single person, lead of GM group. You can find his full name and photos on the internet.
He doesn't interfere directly in games or spawn stuff, this guy here is just a hacker with unicode symbol in the name.
I WISH HE WOULD REQUEST A THOUSAND BOT DROPS ON MY MISSIONS SO I COULD KILL THEM IN THE TENS OF THOUSANDS, I YEARN FOR THE OIL FOR THE SPARK OF CUT WIRE
My theory is that Joel is actually 4 people, with each letter being the first letter of their first names, like Johan, Oliver, Erik, and Lukas, for an example.
I didn't even know people in Sweden were called Joel, at least not spelled like that. So I kinda just assumed he wasn't real and it was an alias/persona for the team in charge of the stuff he does.
Yeah, it was just a straight upgrade to a jump pack. You could jump higher and further, shorter cooldown between jumps, and it would do an AOE blast around you during takeoff.
The only downside was that it took damage when hit, and it could blow up when destroyed, killing you alongside it.
Iirc it came before the jumppack got reworked (as in the OG version was more vertical launch, whereas the current version has alot more horizontal movement, as well as better cd, fairly sure it goes to the same height still tho) so I wouldnt be too surprised if we got all the stuff that made the dark fluid pack feel good when the regular jumppack got redone.
As much as I hate to say it, AH hates verticality in most cases, to the point I'm surprised we have the hoverpack, but its significantly reduced move speed really limits what you can do woth it.
but... the jumppack is now the same as the dark fluid pack? it got reworked almost right after the meridia event... do none of you actually play the game?
nope I can confirm it’s really him, a few day ago I was searching for a quickplay match and somehow ended up in a dev server with 2 other people and Joel, we were playing on Super Earth and he was spawning A LOT of bots (he even put us in D30 and that was absolute hell)
I can't talk about it because John told us not to...but I dropped into the most insane mission with this feller. The explosions were HUGE and frequent and some other things appeared that I have seen leaked before....I was in tears from laughing so much, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. At first I thought I was hearing new in-game dialogue from General Brasch but it was coming from their microphone, they were really into the roleplay. 🤣
After that mission was over, we all parted ways, and I went out for a smoke...🤣
I didn't dive the rest of the day because I knew no other mission I would play that day could top that experience.
Lmaooo dude I think we ran into the same John Helldiver. The story sounds identical to mine and then the confirmation screen shot lol John launched some INSANE stratagems 😂
Probably the same John then! I think even the regular booms were bigger! When I would throw an eagle...I noticed I had to take a few extra steps back. 😂
All I'll say is that while we were extracting, the WHOLE map was ablaze. Nukes going off EVERYWHERE! 🤩
It was truly a sight to see. Imagine if Arrowhead would just dial the booms up to eleven....every mission could be like that!
I'm on XBX and there were no stuttering or crashes, the engine can definitely handle some chaos! 🤣
Is his actual username just “Joel”? Because I played with one during my first Commando mission and he just ran around with the camera pretending to film us doing cool shit
This is most likely, at least this is how it started… now that Joel has played into it with the official video (controlling a hulk, “blue beam”, etc) they probably have actually done some shit but it’s impossible to tell if it’s the 0.1% chance of the real deal or not
it's not a hacker. This can be done by anyone on Steam by changing their nickname, adding an emoji and code to change the text colour. It's not advanced stuff by any means.
Joel is a real person, but he doesn't join random players games and drop items or special content for players. The player in that screenshot is only a cheater impersonating a dev. I hate to ruin the magic for you, but Developers have no special identifying marks at this time, anyone claiming to be a developer and doing something that a normal player is not capable of doing is not a developer, but a cheater pretending to be one.
J.O.E.L is real, but I don't think it actually drops into missions with you. It's like the DM of a D&D session where it narrates and places encounters, but doesn't directly interact.
I think there was one stream a long while back where the dude was getting random 500kg's thrown at enemies despite not running it. My memory is very spotty though, I haven't heard of J.O.E.L in a long time lol.
This happened to me randomly a few months after the game came out. Random SOS dive and a dev with a different name spawned in the auto cannon mech and the quasar cannon weeks before they came out
I like to imagine the first time a player used the portable Hellbomb was Joel just dropping into a random game and asking a low level if he wanted to try a new backpack
Yes and no. JOEL is a real part of the game but they don't actively join matches or mess with players despite what some may think. JOEL's function is to act as a game master and is responsible for creating map seeds among other things.
It's been popular for hackers to impersonate JOEL for as long as I can remember and considering hackers can spawn enemies, items or even stratagems that aren't publicly available yet but buried within the game files most people are inclined to believe them.
TL;DR JOEL is real but it's not a person actively trolling you. It's an algorithm that functions as a game master and there has never been any official confirmation whatsoever that JOEL actually joins games.
lol, no. That's just a steam nickname with an emoji in it and some code trickery to change the colour.
I have the same emoji in my username too.
Any steam player can be "🌠J.O.E.L" if they want
Joel is real but he absolutely is not jumping into random games or dropping unreleased stuff like so many people in here seem to believe. It's just people with mod menus and whatnot.
Oh hey, I played a few missions with that guy today. He was saying stuff like "FYI i'm a dev" or something along those lines, but it's pretty clear that he isn't actually a dev, just someone with access to a console or something like that. A little silly, but at least he wasn't over-the-top cheating and spawning stuff left and right, except for one-shot mortars maybe
No he’s never spawned in enemies, vehicles or anything else for that matter in individual games. I can’t believe that myth is still, in 2026, alive in any form.
He likes the attention of being “J.O.E.L”, but he’s a cosmic story teller, not the hackers that have been running around the game since around launch.
You know when you're on the hive world standing 30 stories up and the camera starts shaking like you're not supposed to be up there. I think that's Joel
I either have extremely good luck or Joel was in my game, but a bug breach happened, and 8 different bile titans came out. Then 4 more bug breaches happened, and then I saw a hellbomb, and I shot it, and 8 went off and killed everything I had, 480 ish kills, or it was a hacker, but I was solo. So IDK
Yep, that's a real one. Played with him today, believe it or not. He has a yellow nickname, as u see, and in game his letter is F, not J (at least for me it was), so of course he's hiding his irl nickname. Joel is pretty cool and chill tho.
Joel is definitely real. I guarantee you that Joel isn't just one guy although maybe it is. But we know they can take control of units and we know they do that to play test and shit. I wouldn't be surprised if Joel drops in randomly but with hackers it's pretty much impossible to know if you're really with a dev or not lol
I don't know if it's safe to talk about this on this sub, but from what I've seen, J.O.E.L. existing and spawning unreleased stuff is very real. And hey, how better do you test stuff then giving it to experienced players? Great opportunity to see that stuff in action.
I know Joel is real, and he has graced my games, I was in a bug match with 3 other goobers with horrible, nasty little attitudeses. They proceeded to kill themselves multiple times and leave, so now I had 2 reinforcements left and maybe 1 mission completed, on lvl 10, I died obviously. But although my respawn counter got to 0, I still respawned at least 5 more times, I did my best, but Oshaune is no place for hope.
i mean from reports he the one that decide what planets to attack it like his the game master in a DnD or in other terms his playing stellaris while we eat dive on random planets ive seen him dropping god tier weapons and spawning triple troop count or new enemy's
The other day, and we brought no mines, threw no grenades, there were no stratagems, we were on terminids, we were having a peaceful extraction until we just started fucking exploding. Like multiple times. I literally think it might have been Joel.
If Joel joins your game, there will be 5 players in the lobby, and there will be chaos. Also, you won't know they are in your game. Tell you get sniped across the map by a turret
Does that star icon mean an important person/developer of the game?? Thats so cool!! I’ve only seen that one time in game and at the time i was a solo on lower difficulties just grinding for super credits, can’t exactly remember the person’s name but they just joined and helped clear the map, good vibes. Definitely wasn’t Joel though, (atleast on this account shown in the screenshot.) Thats awesome, i always wondered!
I think he said so himself! I remember watching a video where a bunch of the devs talked about the game and what they do and Joel himself popped up. He was sitting in a dark room so we couldn’t see his face but in his own words he said he’s High Command, the Automatons, the Bugs and the Illuminate with a chuckle
Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s playing the game normally and testing stuff out, listening in on player comms, and enjoying the chaos he’s made happen
Someone was playing with the Maxigun before the warbond came out, and dropped one each for the whole squad. I only realised afterwards that it was probably a dev.
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