HELLDIVERS™ 2 News

Wake up, a new Helldivers 2 Major Order just arrived, and it's promising the means to create "Orbital Napalm Barrages" if it's successfully completed. What've you got to do to make sure that's the case? Well, nick some plastic from the automatons.

Yep, after everyone got very angry at Arrowhead for some changes that made fire-based weapons a bit less effective in the name of realism - a situation the studio's already attempting to rectify with the subseqent fixes it's deploying, the ability to drop highly flammable gelatinous liquid on Super Earth's foes looks to be incoming.

The fresh MO simply reads: "Liberate the Automaton stockpile of polystyrene on Vernen Wells and decommission the targeted number of Automatons to enable the production of Orbital Napalm Barrages." How many automatons, you ask? Well, a casual 500 million, because big numbers mean nothing to the divers.

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It's been a little bit of time since Helldivers 2 players have heard much from former Arrowhead CEO and still very much chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt, with the developer seemigly having enjoyed some very well-earned time off. Now, however, he's made a bit of a return in rather grand fashion, by answering Discord questions from everyone and their mum.

Naturally, the flak the studio has faced from players following the deployment of the most recent batch of weapon balancing changes - the one Arrowhead announced that much-discussed 60-day plan of changes that it's already acting upon in reponse to - came up, as it has in 99% of dev chats about the game over the last little while.

"It's hard. It's a tricky situation. The criticism is valid, but it causes low morale, and low morale causes slow development speed. Talk about negative spiral," Pilestedt said in response to a player asking how the game's developers are currently feeling. "I think it's important for us to reiterate to the team that criticism happens because people care, " he added in a separate response, "The worst thing would have been if we fucked up and oo one cared."

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Helldivers 2's latest Major Order, at least in theory, is one of those one people really like. Seriously, there are a bunch of things to kill a big number of, and if that's not enough, one of Arrowhead's community managers has just reiterated that having fun on the menu is "an explicit company target" when it comes to the game.

You can't say the studio’s been slacking when it comes to enacting that 60-day plan of changes to help get it outlined following the whole Escalation of Freedom debacle either, having deployed two patches in the last two days. Sure, one was an emergency whipping out of a single fix, but that'll have taken plenty of work.

One of the bugs Arrowhead still has on its hit list is one that's seen Bile Titans not taking head damage properly on occasion, and some players reckon the latest Major Order could well have the side objective of helping the developer gather some more data to help eliminate that issue.

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This patch is an emergency hot fix addressing the Impaler crash. We deemed it worth bringing this one crash fix in now in an attempt to minimize the crashes during the weekend. Thank you for your understanding.

• Fixed a common crash that occurs when killing the Impaler inside a Stronghold
  

[h2]Known Issues (unchanged from previous list)[/h2]

• Players may not receive Friend Requests sent from another platform.
  
• "Invite only" games created by a friend can still be seen on the Galactic War map but cannot be joined.
  
• “Conduct Geological Survey” mission may become incompletable if a player calls in “Seismic Probe” and immediately leaves the game or disconnects.
  
• Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head.
  
• Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
  
• Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights.
  
• Chain-link fences block flamethrowers’ fire.
  
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
  
• “Guard Dog Rover” does not overheat when firing continuously.
  
• Players are able to pick up empty expendable weapons like EAT-17 or MLS-4X.
  
• Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress.
  
• The Service Technician on the ship cannot be interacted with.
  

UPDATE (21/08/24, 12:55 PM BST): Arrowhead has just issued another patch for Helldivers 2, this time aiming to rectify just one issue: "a common crash that occurs when killing the Impaler inside a Stronghold". "This patch is an emergency hot fix addressing the Impaler crash. We deemed it worth bringing this one crash fix in now in an attempt to minimize the crashes during the weekend. Thank you for your understanding," the studio wrote.

Good news, people who’ve been unhappy about the state of Helldivers 2 since the deployment of the Escalation of Freedom update, there’s a fresh patch out and it very much looks to be the first step on Arrowhead’s road to addressing all of the complaints.

If you’re out of the loop, the studio’s previously outlined a 60-day plan of changes to help get the game back where it thinks the majority of players want it to be, and at a glance, this update is definitely a step in the right direction.

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