HELLDIVERS™ 2 News

I've written a bit about playing Helldivers 2 as a solo diver, noting that Arrowhead's frenetic shooter holds up surprisingly well when you rudely insist on treating it like an open world stealth sim, a la Metal Gear Solid V. The developers have weighed in on this front, commenting that strictly speaking, Helldivers 2 doesn't support stealth at all. It's just designed in an "agnostic", systems-first way and this in itself makes stealth a possibility. It's also a quiet attempt to capture something of the intricacy of a full-blown military simulator, while still being a very "arcadey" game at heart, which owes a little to Arrowhead's own collective time in the military.

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A new Helldivers 2 patch has been implemented into the game which nerfs heavy enemies, with an emphasis on Terminids like Chargers and Bile Titans. This includes spawn rates at difficulty seven and higher, as well as the chances of charger and bile titan spawn spikes - which had been resulting in multiple foes attacking all at once and overwhelming players.

The patch notes make clear that this isn't strictly a difficulty decrease, as these changes in enemy distribution will result in other enemy types coming in higher numbers. So while you may not see three chargers rushing you at once, expect to see other bugs and robots take their place.

It's also now easier to take down chargers in particular. In the patch notes, the devs make note of the community's efforts to tackle these enemies by focusing the backs of their legs with certain heavy weapons. This was a slightly tricky - if effective - way of taking them out quickly, but the team at Arrowhead have made adjustments, stating: "spending your heavy anti tank weapons on legs instead of the obvious weak point seems counter to expectation".

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• The amount of heavily armored targets that spawn on higher difficulties, especially for Terminids, have been a big discussion point online and internally. The intent is for groups to have to bring some form of anti-tank capability but not to the degree previously needed.
  
• To that end we have reduced the spawn rate of Chargers and Bile Titans on difficulties 7 and up. In addition we have reduced the risk of spawn spikes of Chargers and Bile Titans.
  
• Please note that we have changed the distribution of enemy types, not reduced difficulty. Expect other enemy types to appear in greater numbers instead.
  
• We are humbled by the community's ability to find things like Chargers “leg meta” in our game, however spending your heavy anti tank weapons on legs instead of the obvious weak point seems counter to expectation.
  
• We are not changing anything regarding the Charger’s legs, we are however lowering the health of the Charger’s head. It should now be at a point where a well placed shot from a Recoilless Rifle or EAT-17 instantly kills a charger.
  
• Together with the unfortunately undocumented change of last patch that increased the armor penetration ability of less well placed shots for EAT-17s and Recoilless Rifle shots, Chargers should now be easier to handle by well equipped groups.
  

• "Electronic Countermeasures" operation modifier, which had a chance of giving you a random stratagem instead of the one you input, has been removed in order to be reworked, and will be reintroduced in a future iteration. We found that this modifier wasn’t communicated clearly enough and overall caused more frustration than excitement with the way it was currently implemented. This change was made in 1.000.100 but was unintentionally omitted from the patch notes.
  

• Fixed missing text on several HUD / UI elements.
  
• Fixed several subtitle / VO mismatches in the news videos.
  
• Fixed various crashes that occurred mid-gameplay and when deploying to missions.
  

• Game crashes when attempting to use a stim while inside an Exosuit.
  
• Pink artifacts may appear in the sky when setting off large explosions.
  
• Automaton Dropship seemingly disappears and slides in after being shot down.
  
• Shots from arc-based weapons may not count towards kills in post-mission stats.
  
• Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code.
  
• Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the friend requests tab.
  
• Players may be unable to select loadout or return to ship when joining a multiplayer game session via PS5 Activity Card.
  
• The Exosuit can destroy itself with rockets if it fires while turning.
  
• Text chat box display is obstructed by the cinematic letterboxing during extraction.
  
• Some people are unable to accept friend requests. This is mostly an issue cross platform
  

1. HELLDIVERS™ 2
2. Steam Deck
3. Dragon's Dogma 2
4. Last Epoch
5. Forza Horizon 5
6. Supermarket Simulator
7. Crusader Kings III
8. Call of Duty®
9. Baldur's Gate 3
10. HELLDIVERS™ 2 - Upgrade to Super Citizen Edition

Oh no, Helldivers 2 players are asking Arrowhead to consider making a little change to the game in order to make things easier for folk who aren’t up to the challenge of delving into a higher difficulty battle just to secure some super samples. To be fair to them, the idea of transmuting plentiful resources into other ones seems to be going down pretty well so far.

This isn’t the first time that the way the game dishes out its rewards - or more imporatenl;y what folks have to go through in order to acquire some of the stuff they want - has been a point of discussion in its community. Remember the whole farming debate, which feels like it happened about ten years ago now we’re at the point when mech riding’s becoming a thing and people have gradually stopped causing a ruckus about balancing?

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