Helldivers 2 has been, over the course of its turbulent lifespan, criticised for a couple of things—firstly, its heavily armoured enemies take a little too long to murder, and are downright impossible to kill without specific equipment. Secondly, whenever anyone’s having a bit too much fun, the weapon in question seems to get nerfed.
Arrowhead Games’ CCO—formerly CEO—Johan Pilestedt took to Discord to talk a little about the design philosophies fuelling an upcoming patch, which is coming to the horde shooter September 17.
Said update promises to address several major bugbears, such as restoring the flamethrower to its former glory.Moreover, it’ll be aiming to make Helldivers 2 more ‘hoo’-rah, less ‘getting ragdolled by a dozen chargers because you had the gall to die right after calling down the weapon you needed to kill them with’-rah. Which is good, because that latter option’s a mouthful.
“The update that we are launching now is a much larger holistic take to realign the gameplay,” Pilestedt writes. “The reason why so many of you found excitement in some tools such as the flamethrower, railgun, [and] Eruptor, [we] realised, is because they could deal with heavily armored enemies much more effectively than they were supposed to … the changes we needed to make were a bit larger than just getting the flamethrower back to where it was; But also getting other weapons up to the level that where you (and I) feel they all should’ve been from the start.”
Essentially, the way Pilestedt lays it out, Helldivers 2 has an issue where specialised tools aren’t just good at what they do, but mandatory to do it in the first place—with every other weapon being pea-shooters by comparison. Instead, Arrowhead wants to make weapons broadly more effective while also making specialised anti-tank weapons like the Spear stronger against their intended foes.
A good example of this dropped today on the game’s Twitter, actually—the railgun is going to get a beefy upgrade, quadrupling its overall “durable” damage, as well as giving it a 150% damage boost at a full charge (up from a mere 50%).
The Railgun’s damage will get a boost too! Durable damage will be increased from 60 to 225 and fully overcharging damage will be increased from 150% to 250%. #BuffDivers pic.twitter.com/i3OjNREro3September 11, 2024
“There is still a potential to excel by using the right tools, like Spear and RL against [Bile Titans]—but you could, in theory, defeat [Bile Titans] with a 4 stack of flamethrower mad-men,” Pilested writes in a reply to one player.
As if there was ever any doubt, when a player asks how the more specialised weapons like the Recoilless Rifle will be handled in a new, more versatile world, the CCO responds they’ll be “basically, [a] ‘delete’ key.” I like the sound of that.
All in all, if this patch delivers on its promises, it seems like Arrowhead will have dealt with most of its player base’s continued frustrations with its balance updates—a shift away from conservative number-fiddling and instead allowing its fun options to be, well, fun and effective at dispensing liberty.