Helldivers 2 has finally completed its 60-day plan—well, its 63-day plan, but who's keeping score? Me, but that's only because it's my job. In case you've not fought for liberty in a while, here's some context:
This game's had a bit of a controversial patching history, namely due to the general air that Arrowhead was acting as, essentially, the fun police, nerfing weapons whenever they see a little too much use—apparently to keep build diversity a thing, even if it mostly had the opposite effect, relegating players to a limited set of loadouts because missions were just too damn hard.
That ship has been thoroughly turned around already, with the last major patch incorporating a ton of buffs that've thoroughly ramped up build diversity, though at the cost of making the game quite a bit easier. I'm fine with that personally, since I think horde shooters should generally let you, y'know, shoot hordes—but offering well-balanced harder difficulty that sticks to this philosophy is definitely Arrowhead's next big task.
Anyway, you can read the full patch notes yourself, though Arrowhead's also put out a blog post outlining its general philosophy, courtesy of Mikael Eriksson:
"Your feedback regarding the Escalation of Freedom update was both insightful and vital to our improvement process. We listened, we learned, and we took action," Eriksson writes, before outlining the broad strokes:
- There’s been a comprehensive balancing pass on over 70 weapons and stratagems, reworking armour penetration and adjusting enemy armour and health values.
- Several enemies have been overhauled to ensure they present a challenge while feeling rewarding to defeat. Notable changes include reducing armour values for heavy enemies like Hulks, Chargers, Impalers and Bile Titans, along with limiting the rocket fire from Devastators and Gunships.
- We took a deep dive into core systems like enemy spawning as well as targeting and vision for the Automatons.
As for the specifics? Firstly, there's been some broad tweaks to the way your Helldivers' armour works, too. Heavy Armour and Light Armour sets have 5% more damage reduction and take 8% less damage, respectively. Broadly speaking, this means that Light Armour has less of a downside, and Heavy Armour is more appetising.
When it comes to weapons, Plasma guns have had some unilateral buffs—like the PLAS-1 Scorcher, which has a higher fire rate and magazine capacity now. The Liberator line of weapons has seen some love, alongside the BR-14 Adjudicator. What's really exciting here, though, are the buffs to throwables.
Throwing knives have had their available uses increased from eight to a staggering 20, while the High Explosive, Frag, and Incendiary grenades have all had their damage doubled. This feels like it's designed to bring them in-line with the tank-melting thermite grenade—making this buff further proof that Arrowhead's ditched the whole "nerf first" approach to balance.
Both the Autocannon and Recoilless Rifle have had new use cases added, as per their programmable ammunition. The Autocannon has flak projectiles, now, which explode based on proximity—basically, if you're in a very crowd-rich environment and want to avoid blowing yourself up, you can turn the flak off. Meanwhile, the Recoilless Rifle has received a high-yield explosive ammo type, which hits a wider area in exchange for its armour-penetrating qualities.
Other stratagems have seen buffs, too. Jump packs should yeet you further, Drone packs can now be recalled if you're a coward, and just about every sentry has seen cooldown reduction buffs across the board. The Anti-Tank Mines, which the playerbase avoided for so long, might be straight busted now. They're only triggered by heavier enemies, and their damage has been increased from 800 to 2,000—their explosion radius is a li'l smaller, but they're better at doing what they say on the tin, now.
There've also been some major changes to gameplay. Previously, once you completed a mission, patrols spawned at a higher rate basically everywhere. Now, this increased spawn rate is limited to the extraction point: "This change should make patrol spawning feel more logical and reduce the penalty for players who complete the mission but still want to explore the map or collect samples," Arrowhead writes.
Automatons have seen a swathe of nerfs, too. They shouldn't track you through solid terrain anymore, which is neat, but the studio's also fully canonised meme John Helldiver (in the same honour as, say, John Dark souls, or John Final Fantasy) via a nerf to Hulk Bruisers:
"In response to their disapproval of a newly installed cannon on the Automaton Hulk Bruisers, Super Earth High Command sent a crack commando to sabotage their production facilities. The skilled operative promptly escaped into the shadows after completing their mission. Today, still wanted by the Automatons, they survive as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can enlist… John Helldiver."
The Automaton's armour has also generally been reduced, and the way tanks take damage is slightly different: "The rear weak spots of the Tank's body now have their own health pool, which matches the Tank's previous total health. Once this health pool is depleted, the Tank will be destroyed. Additionally, these weak spots also deal 150% damage to the Tank's main health."
Best I can tell, this change essentially means that rear weak spots should be more vulnerable, but they should also contribute to the tank's main HP if you hit them. Meaning if you've already dinged up a tank but haven't quite killed it, spitting in the direction of the weak spot should follow natural logic and finish the job.
Naturally, there've also been some crash fixes and bug fixes, alongside a list of known issues Arrowhead's still working on, which I'll provide below. All in all, this all seems like good stuff—and I'm glad to see the studio properly following through on its big swings.
Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Top Priority:
- The hive breaker drill may be inaccessible when called in
- Players may not receive Friend Requests sent from another platform
- Terminals may lose functionality blocking completion of a mission
- Social menu is stuck on ‘Please Wait Democratically’ for some players
- Title may crash during intro cinematic or title screen
- Friends "Invite only" games can still be seen on the Galactic War Map but cannot be joined
Medium Priority:
- Players are unable to shoot properly while in the air using a jetpack
- Stratagem balls bounce unpredictably off cliffs and some spots
- Some Eagle Stratagems may not drop when deployed on a swamp planet
- Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress
- Pelican-1 may sometimes be launched away if hit with an impaler tentacle
- Supply packs may be incorrectly used if pressing down on a controller while calling in a stratagem
- High damage weapons will not detonate hellbombs already present on the map
- Some enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions
- QWERTY keyboard numpad bindings does not save correctly after the Title restart
