Helldivers 2’s Big Buff Patch Pays Off With More Players and Good Feedback

Helldivers 2 is a “dead game”; long live Helldivers 2The co-op action shooter pitting the forces of Super Earth against endless waves of murderous automatons or terrifying Terminids had a massive launch in February, but faltered over the summer months. A recent patch from developer Arrowhead led to a resurgence of players returning to the fight or picking up the game for the first time, as well as tons of positive reactions on social media — but all the new patches highlight a few remaining issues.

The patch, released on September 17, reversed the nerfs that had accumulated over balance patches to many popular weapons, like the Railgun and Flamethrower, and buffed many other weapons in the Helldivers’ arsenal. The only new nerf that impacted my playthrough was the Commando; it used to be able to kill an Automaton Fabricator in one shot from any angle. Now it takes two shots. That feels fair to me, and the rest of the buffs certainly make up for it – like the Thermal Grenade’s damage going from 150 to 2000.

Players were previously stuck in a metagame of using a few ideal weapons and stratagems; the update has added a more versatile arsenal. The recoilless rifle is a new fan favorite, especially since it can destroy transport ships and their contents with a single well-aimed shot. The lance has become a powerful siege weapon, and the flamethrower eliminates magazines in the blink of an eye.

The power-ups make each individual mission much more fun and flexible, but large-scale warfare still presents some problems. Consider, if you will, the presence of the Automatons. The robots have been slowly closing in on Super Earth, while the Terminids are constantly being fought. A good portion of the Helldivers simply won’t abandon the insect front, neither for orders from Super Earth, nor for the rewards they can get. It can be frustrating to throw yourself into the warfront of a Major Order, only to inevitably fail while thousands of players are having fun fighting insects on Hellmire.

As Helldivers 2 Arrowhead is going to have to think about how players coordinate for war, especially during major events like the Terminid supercolony on Meridia, which the Helldivers had to attack in a suicide mission to create a black hole. Once the first game’s highly anticipated third faction, the Illuminates, shows up in the galaxy, things are only going to get more complicated. Arrowhead has addressed many of the frustrations in the game, but it’s worth taking a look at the map as a whole to see what else can be fixed.