Latest Balance Update Ignites Community Discussions
When Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead releases a major balance update for the PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter, the community debates the various nerfs and buffs as it comes to grips with the evolving meta. This week’s release of patch 01.000.300, which tweaked a long list of weapons, stratagems, and enemies, sparked particularly vociferous discussions.
A change to the beloved Quasar Cannon is just one that has led to claims that Arrowhead has nerfed the fun out of Helldivers 2. The game’s Discord and subreddit are particularly active as Arrowhead community managers address concerns about nerfs, even as they highlight that the patch also significantly buffed a number of key weapons. The Adjudicator, for instance, has enjoyed a major buff, as have the Punisher Plasma and the Counter Sniper. The regular Guard Dog and the Railgun also received some attention. Various other weapons were rebalanced with a mix of buffs and nerfs.
Controversy Over Solo Player Gameplay Adjustments
As the row over Helldivers 2’s apparent nerfs continues, Arrowhead has addressed another aspect of the patch that has drawn controversy: patrols for solo players.
In the patch notes released this week, Arrowhead stated that patrol spawning was increased when there are fewer than four players. The fewer the players, the greater the change. For four-player missions, there is no change compared to before. However, “the most noticeable change will be for solo players at higher difficulties.”
Essentially, Helldivers 2 is now harder for teams of three players or fewer, and much harder for solo players. Helldivers 2 is designed to be played co-op, ideally in squads of four, but of course, sometimes that’s not possible, and indeed there are plenty of players who prefer to play solo, challenging themselves to complete missions on their own and on the hardest difficulties even though Helldivers 2 can be incredibly difficult played this way.
Following the release of the patch, Arrowhead made a statement attributed to design director Niklas Broström, who explained that this change was about correcting a previous oversight.
“We unintentionally had non-linear scaling of the patrol spawns so they didn’t spawn as often as they should have when fewer than four players were involved,” Broström said. “The intention is that one player has 1/4th of the patrols compared to four players, but it used to be that they had 1/6th.”
“Scaling of patrol spawns was exponential before, and that felt good in four-player lobbies but far too empty when playing with fewer players, especially when playing solo. Now we have made the scaling of patrols linear, which means if you play solo, you will get 25% of the patrols compared to a four-player lobby instead of having about 17% of the patrols. There is still a cap on patrols that can spawn at the same time, so during situations when we spawn a lot of patrols, such as extractions, even solo players won’t notice the difference. The change was made to make the world feel less empty for one and two-player lobbies, especially on high difficulty missions, which were also slightly too easy for solo players compared to our intentions.”
As it turns out, Helldivers 2 was unintentionally too easy for solo players, and now it’s at the difficulty level Arrowhead always intended.
After the patch:
The New Ricochet System Sucks🔗Eys-Beowulf | #Helldivers2 pic.twitter.com/RPO0hJcN8t
— Helldivers 2 Media (@Helldiversmedia) April 30, 2024
Discussion on Ricochet Mechanics
The patch reaction doesn’t end there. There’s also a discussion about a significant change to ricochet: “Shots that ricochet from heavily armored enemies will now properly hit the shooter. Trigger discipline is highly recommended.”
Players are now reporting ending up dead more often by shots that ricochet, but there is confusion about just how much of an issue this is. Clips are circulating on social media that seem to show players suffering embarrassing deaths due to their own deflecting shots, but some have suggested there isn’t a significant change here. The prevailing theory is that the patch has made it so that the player now takes damage from their own bullets and shrapnel when ricochet occurs, compared to the pre-patch situation where they were immune.
Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around 3,000,000 copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing.
By Andrej Kovacevic
Updated on 14th July 2024