{{TL;DR}}: This game is genuinely cursed. To all the new players joining: You will enjoy this game. You will have fun, and you'll be able to do it with or without people you know. You'll find learning new tactics and game mechanics fun and interesting, and you'll especially enjoy having skilled players teach you how to better play. However, HLL is not a fun game but in fact a frustrating and maybe even depressing game to play once you learn fully how to "properly" play the game and "win matches" or "have a real strategy." Don't listen to the boomers or the larpers: play this game to enjoy the pastime of shooting Nazis and try your best to help the team out. But if you play long enough, you'll come to hate this game more than maybe any other FPS.

Just stay there. Don't go further down the rabbit hole. Don't join a larper clan, don't join a competitive team. You will hate yourself for it. {{TL;DR}}

The rest is the ramblings of a veteran HLL player.

I've been playing this game off-and-on since January of 2019. Each year that has gone by, I've learned to hate this game more and more due to becoming insanely burned out by its gameplay loop and becoming exhausted from "taking the game too seriously" or "tryharding." Here's the thing you learn: you have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ choice but to "tryhard" if you want to play the game and win. My favorite HLL YouTuber, Wild Bill Jammin, said it best: "People don't want to play this game, they just want to have fun. But in order to have fun, you have to play it." And that's the sad reality: this game relies so heavily on its veteran community that it becomes impossible to enjoy once you get to a certain level of understanding and experience. And I know that's a gross generalization; I'm sure there are plenty of people with twice the amount of time and experience in this game and in the HLL overarching community who still find it rewarding to play as squadleader every match and complain to themselves in command chat about how people are building garrisons and why the team sucks. If what I just said sounds familiar to you, I suggest playing a new hardcore FPS title like Squad or Post Scriptum, or another similar title, and experiencing what it's like to play as a novice again. The fun will return and you'll probably see what I'm getting at. Because of how the strategies for HLL work out, a lot of pressure is put on people who know how to play the game "correctly" for anything to effectively be accomplished. You want to make sure your team can hold and defend a point? Enjoy pooling over garrison placements, how to balance offensive red garries vs. defensive blue garries, making sure you have backup garries to boot, making sure your squad is in the right position to defend garries, making sure to effectively recon garries, rebuilding garrisons, building garries in places that the other experienced teams may not expect since literally every "correct" garrison spot has already been mapped out years beforehand. On the surface, this sounds like fun. An psuedo-RTS style of FPS strategy that most games can't seem to correctly implement. But I assure you, it becomes monotonous and exhausting, particularly when you can't easily convey how these intricate garrison placements work to other players. Which is funny, because people often get mad at new players over them doing something generally easy to mistake (example: putting a garrison just barely on the red side when it could have been built on the blue side for less supplies and without risking the garry going red due to a 150m radius). When in reality, the game has only very recently placed a "basic training" system into the game, and has instead relied on us veteran players to teach everyone over and over these very poorly explained game mechanics.

And this is of course assuming you're playing in a regular "pub" game. Want to play Competitively in Hell Let Loose? I'll teach you: be a really good shooter from the CS or COD games, be able to shoot over 80+ kills without effort each game and then you'll be able to play in one of 3 teams (that may or may not collapse from incompetence within the next 3 months or so) in the NA region. Otherwise, ♥♥♥♥ off, because this game requires forty-nine (49) non-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to do the bare minimum. Source: I was said ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who sat on the bench 60% of the time. And again, this isn't even the community's fault, because that's just the current requirements to play competitively. The community is so clicky and has been hunkered down to veterans who've played playing since the HLLTC days back in ~2018/2019 that now you have to either be borderline hacking in terms of shooting experience and then you may still get benched. Which is a shame, since Comp HLL actually made me fall in love with this abusive husband of a game all over again because of how fun and unique the gameplay is in Comp. It hurts doubly when every pub game afterwards feels like the transition from going to a five-star dish made by Gordon Ramsey to Burger King.

Despite my possibly polarizing statements, I think I speak for the majority of veteran players when I say that we are almost in a constant state of frustration when it comes to Hell Let Loose. This game works inversely to a title like Team Fortress 2, for example, where the love of the game grows even after 1000+ hours. In HLL, the more experienced you become, the more jaded you become. The more you play the game and you literally sigh in defeat sometimes after 10 minutes in a match that can last for an hour-and-a-half. The more you play the same loadouts and the same roles because the three best guns in the game (M1 Garand, Gewher, STG) are mandatory for that kill ratio. The more you become unenthusiastic about new updates like the Mortain Map which just launched as of writing this. And believe me, many of us were hopeful. Starry-eyed and happy to see a new map. It was called "Purple Heart Lane" and we were all very excited. Update after update of bugs that become features after years of no patches, maps which were only fun 90% for armor rather than infantry. And with every steam sale for the game, having new players having a fun time, even if out of naivety.

Like I said: if you are a new player, you will enjoy this game. You'll maybe even make some new friends and enjoy those sick bombing runs or charging through smoke grenades like we all did the first couple of matches. Just don't sink your teeth too hard. There's a reason why this game has the worst burnout for its longtime players imaginable.

{{TL;DR}}: This game is genuinely cursed. To all the new players joining: You will enjoy this game. You will have fun, and you'll be able to do it with or without people you know. You'll find learning new tactics and game mechanics fun and interesting, and you'll especially enjoy having skilled players teach you how to better play. However, HLL is not a fun game but in fact a frustrating and maybe even depressing game to play once you learn fully how to "properly" play the game and "win matches" or "have a real strategy." Don't listen to the boomers or the larpers: play this game to enjoy the pastime of shooting Nazis and try your best to help the team out. But if you play long enough, you'll come to hate this game more than maybe any other FPS. Just stay there. Don't go further down the rabbit hole. Don't join a larper clan, don't join a competitive team. You will hate yourself for it. {{TL;DR}} The rest is the ramblings of a veteran HLL player. I've been playing this game off-and-on since January of 2019. Each year that has gone by, I've learned to hate this game more and more due to becoming insanely burned out by its gameplay loop and becoming exhausted from "taking the game too seriously" or "tryharding." Here's the thing you learn: you have no goddamn choice but to "tryhard" if you want to play the game and win. My favorite HLL YouTuber, Wild Bill Jammin, said it best: "People don't want to play this game, they just want to have fun. But in order to have fun, you have to play it." And that's the sad reality: this game relies so heavily on its veteran community that it becomes impossible to enjoy once you get to a certain level of understanding and experience. And I know that's a gross generalization; I'm sure there are plenty of people with twice the amount of time and experience in this game and in the HLL overarching community who still find it rewarding to play as squadleader every match and complain to themselves in command chat about how people are building garrisons and why the team sucks. If what I just said sounds familiar to you, I suggest playing a new hardcore FPS title like Squad or Post Scriptum, or another similar title, and experiencing what it's like to play as a novice again. The fun will return and you'll probably see what I'm getting at. Because of how the strategies for HLL work out, a lot of pressure is put on people who know how to play the game "correctly" for anything to effectively be accomplished. You want to make sure your team can hold and defend a point? Enjoy pooling over garrison placements, how to balance offensive red garries vs. defensive blue garries, making sure you have backup garries to boot, making sure your squad is in the right position to defend garries, making sure to effectively recon garries, rebuilding garrisons, building garries in places that the other experienced teams may not expect since literally every "correct" garrison spot has already been mapped out years beforehand. On the surface, this sounds like fun. An psuedo-RTS style of FPS strategy that most games can't seem to correctly implement. But I assure you, it becomes monotonous and exhausting, particularly when you can't easily convey how these intricate garrison placements work to other players. Which is funny, because people often get mad at new players over them doing something generally easy to mistake (example: putting a garrison just barely on the red side when it could have been built on the blue side for less supplies and without risking the garry going red due to a 150m radius). When in reality, the game has only very recently placed a "basic training" system into the game, and has instead relied on us veteran players to teach everyone over and over these very poorly explained game mechanics. And this is of course assuming you're playing in a regular "pub" game. Want to play Competitively in Hell Let Loose? I'll teach you: be a really good shooter from the CS or COD games, be able to shoot over 80+ kills without effort each game and then you'll be able to play in one of 3 teams (that may or may not collapse from incompetence within the next 3 months or so) in the NA region. Otherwise, fuck off, because this game requires forty-nine (49) non-shitbags to do the bare minimum. Source: I was said shitbag who sat on the bench 60% of the time. And again, this isn't even the community's fault, because that's just the current requirements to play competitively. The community is so clicky and has been hunkered down to veterans who've played playing since the HLLTC days back in ~2018/2019 that now you have to either be borderline hacking in terms of shooting experience and then you may still get benched. Which is a shame, since Comp HLL actually made me fall in love with this abusive husband of a game all over again because of how fun and unique the gameplay is in Comp. It hurts doubly when every pub game afterwards feels like the transition from going to a five-star dish made by Gordon Ramsey to Burger King. Despite my possibly polarizing statements, I think I speak for the majority of veteran players when I say that we are almost in a constant state of frustration when it comes to Hell Let Loose. This game works inversely to a title like Team Fortress 2, for example, where the love of the game grows even after 1000+ hours. In HLL, the more experienced you become, the more jaded you become. The more you play the game and you literally sigh in defeat sometimes after 10 minutes in a match that can last for an hour-and-a-half. The more you play the same loadouts and the same roles because the three best guns in the game (M1 Garand, Gewher, STG) are mandatory for that kill ratio. The more you become unenthusiastic about new updates like the Mortain Map which just launched as of writing this. And believe me, many of us were hopeful. Starry-eyed and happy to see a new map. It was called "Purple Heart Lane" and we were all very excited. Update after update of bugs that become features after years of no patches, maps which were only fun 90% for armor rather than infantry. And with every steam sale for the game, having new players having a fun time, even if out of naivety. Like I said: if you are a new player, you will enjoy this game. You'll maybe even make some new friends and enjoy those sick bombing runs or charging through smoke grenades like we all did the first couple of matches. Just don't sink your teeth too hard. There's a reason why this game has the worst burnout for its longtime players imaginable.