Helldivers 2 - Are YOU doing your part for managed democracy?

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**Eumerin**

BrookM wrote:
No chance of a resupply for its ammo? That would be a shame, our resident mech-fanatic has poor trigger discipline.

I've heard that's the way that they worked in the original game.

Having a good group in this game is a blast. I've had plenty of groups where no one (except maybe me) said much of anything, and we got missions done. But when you've got a group that communicates effectively, it makes things so much more fun.

On an unrelated note, it sounds as if Deep Rock Galactic might also adopt a policy that makes it possible to not miss out on season pass loot. If that practice spreads throughout the industry, it'll be great.

**BrookM**

Deep Rock Galactic had such a feature implemented from the moment they announced their free season passes: they do not want anybody missing out and understand that not everybody can or will grind away at them. So any cosmetic, colour scheme or emote not unlocked while it was active will be put in the pool of stuff you can unlock when you come across a lost dwarf stash, the ones you can find after scanning a discarded helmet. It may take a while, but you will still get those cosmetics and colour schemes.

And yes, the game plays better with good comms, we play a private three stack exclusively ourselves, missing a fourth member can hurt on the higher difficulties, especially because one of us refuses to invest in new strats.. sometimes I hop into distress calls, but not really my cuppa.

**Olthannon**

Been blasting bugs and bots the past couple of days after work and oh boy is it a lot of fun. My friends and I have been having a blast.

Picked up the season pass and really enjoying the revolver you get in that.

**FrozenDwarf**

Tried it but cant find mutch long term fun in it.

Allso dont help that there is no way to get ps5 non party voice chat to my mono HS connected to DS5, they all come out of the TV and i do not want that, so i am forced to mute voice chat.

**Grimskul**

New update dropped today. Looks like they're nerfing a lot of the meta picks, the railgun, shield generator pack and the breaker have all taken some hits. I still think they'll be taken, but I am somewhat disappointed they didn't touch up some of the other primary guns a bit. Flamer, Punisher and the Laser Cannon got buffed which is nice, but would have liked them to address the medium armour pen weapons.

Armour seems to be finally implemented but I'm sad to see that heavy armour seems to be a non-starter since taking an extra 2-3 hits over medium armour doesn't seem worth it over the speed and stamina loss. I was hoping it would at least allow you to ignore stagger from lighter attacks from the trash mobs. Especially against bugs, where mobility is so key to surviving on the higher difficulty levels.

**FrozenDwarf**

Well their goal is to not have meta picks, but instead the right tool for the right job based on your personal preference.

"Designer Alex K:

Our goal is to give you a wide range of weapon choices, where each gun has its purpose and none is strictly better than another. Sure, you will have your own favorite, but it should come from your personal preference, not from the universally agreed knowledge of which gun is the strongest. Generally, we balance each item according to its quirks, so if a weapon is very effective at what it does, it should come with significant disadvantages to balance its power.

The AC-8 Autocannon is a good example of a well-balanced weapon: it packs a powerful punch, has a very good range, but requires you to carry an ammo backpack or have a friend assist you. The GL-21 Grenade Launcher is the opposite example. It's a good general purpose weapon that gives you so much flexibility, it obviously can't deal too much damage without becoming overpowered.

But weapons that are both powerful and versatile become a no-brainer choiсe during the weapon selection phase. It robs you of your own agency, as stale "meta" builds force you to make an unfair choice between a fun weapon and an effective one. In short: Powerful weapons can't be too versatile, versatile weapons can't be too powerful.

On a more personal note, I know that having your favorite toy nerfed absolutely sucks. Investing countless hours into mastering a weapon is an incredible dedication from you, which is the main reason we're making this game in the first place. And then having that weapon weakened feels like a punishment for being too good at the game.

But I implore you not to compare a changed item with its older version, but to evaluate the existing one as it is and see if it still has a place in your heart."

**BrookM**

Both sides of the argument make good points for and against the nerfs, but the main problem so far is.. the devs want us to use strats to kill the big guys, while at the same time penalizing you heavily for using them in the tougher difficulty brackets (longer deploy times, longer recharge times, other penalties on top of that) and also spamming the gak out of the really tough monsters and vehicles. One fix that keeps getting mentioned is to just downgrade the armour on some things, like the legs of a Charger, if you're going to face six of them at once, might as well throw the players a bone.

Right now we're on a short liberation mission, if we succeed, we will get the exo suits!

**Grimskul**

Yeah, I've really seen more of the complaints come from the bugs because they feel a lot more binary compared to Automatons because Automatons come in with built in weakpoints that are much more accessible compared to Chargers and Bile Titans where they are both hard to outmaneuvre and there feels like there's waaaaay more of them compared to Hulks and other Tanks. At the very least Arrowhead needs to scale back the numbers a bit or make it so the Charger can't spin on a dime or make it so that shooting the butt actually is more effective for basic guns than havingly to constantly strip off the leg armour to kill it.

**Eumerin**

Hopped on tonight and did my part to secure the mech factories.

Meteors suck, full stop. I got so sick of having to keep an eye out for those things.

**BrookM**

More lasers and other energy weapons incoming!

Automatically Appended Next Post:
We have won the war for Tien Kwan and as such, the EXO-45 PATRIOT EXOSUIT has been approved for general deployment! It unlocks at level 25 for 20,000 but can be called in once per mission right now.

**Olthannon**

I had a little tootle about in the mech in a game just now, it's pretty fun but I think the balance is a little off. I think it's maybe a better use against bots.

Game seems a little janky at the minute, getting stuck on the shiny pods and in that last game got no xp or medals..

**BrookM**

Servers were swamped again due to the sudden unlock of the mechs, rewards will have been added at later points when the servers have caught up.

I feel the opposite about the mech, great against bugs, who don't have that much ranged, while decent against the bots, where I rampaged through their outposts until a lucky rocket one-shot me. Current outfitting is decent enough, but very.. hit or miss, the rockets are very powerful but have zero splash damage and the minigun takes a little too long to spool up for firing for my liking.

**Olthannon**

Yep the more I've played the more I enjoy the mech. Also finally tried out level 6 difficulty which is just endless ~~Biotitans~~ whatever they are actually called. Difficult but not impossible.

https://www.gamesradar.com/helldivers-2-ceo-jokes-that-the-only-reason-the-game-would-ever-get-giant-microtransactions-would-be-to-fund-his-warhammer-habit/

Also don't know if anyone saw this but it made me chuckle. Given the game is 90% a 40k game, it's hardly a surprise.

**BrookM**

Currently the balancing in higher difficulties is severely unbalanced and the devs are looking into the matter, also taking in feedback from the community as a whole, we may see destruction of bug nests and bot factories have an influence on extraction if there's enough interest for it.

And yeah, people have asked Arrowhead to make 40k cosmetics happen already.

If there's one game where they would fit in seamlessly, it's this one. They've not been shy about wearing their influences openly, some of the weapons are nods towards 40k, like the assault rifle that shoots miniature rockets. Hell, in their previous game, Magicka, there was even a not-Space Marine Librarian skin complete with boltgun and moose-capped force staff.

We may also see a Casper Van Dien cameo, that would be neat, tying in with the other source of inspiration: Starship Troopers the movie.

**Spacemanvic**

Me and two of my sons play the Hell out of it, whenever we can. Sometimes I play solo. Using Voice Attack to call in stratagems.

Spacemanvic is my Steam handle if anyone wants to join in...

**BrookM**

Patch notes!

Good day citizens of Super Earth. A new patch to aid you in your efforts is coming in. May Super Earth give you courage

Overview
Today's patch is dealing with the spawn rate of heavily armored Terminid enemies as well as the possible play against them. It also contains some fixes to UI elements and crash fixes.

Balancing
Enemies:
- 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.

Gameplay
"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.

Fixes
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.

Known Issues
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

Release Captain Carlberg out

All in all, the change in health to the head of the Charger is a welcome compromise!

**Daba**

Olthannon wrote:
Yep the more I've played the more I enjoy the mech. Also finally tried out level 6 difficulty which is just endless ~~Biotitans~~ whatever they are actually called. Difficult but not impossible.

https://www.gamesradar.com/helldivers-2-ceo-jokes-that-the-only-reason-the-game-would-ever-get-giant-microtransactions-would-be-to-fund-his-warhammer-habit/

Also don't know if anyone saw this but it made me chuckle. Given the game is 90% a 40k game, it's hardly a surprise.

This makes a lot of sense lol

**Eumerin**

The change to chargers was needed.

I hopped on for a bit last night... What a disaster. Worst group I've ever played with.

Spot a Scout Strider? Don't try and maneuver around it or set it up for your teammates. Instead, call in an orbital strike! See an automaton patrol off in the distance? Don't avoid it! I think almost half of our deaths were due to strategems.

I managed to prod them in the direction of the objectives instead of fighting every last automaton reinforcement. But we ended up wiping when the last two squad members called in the evac shuttle, jumped off of the raised landing pad, and never got back up onto it even after the shuttle landed.

And all three of the other team members were like this.

**BrookM**

I do the odd bit of helping out with randoms, but for the most part I avoid it due to just that. Will say, dropping into a game of low levels and giving them my shiny kit is always fun, I'm just there to help out and let them play with things like the railgun, autocannon and now that the EXO is no longer available to everyone, that as well.

Also, I have had some fun killing chargers with the EAT, just perfection. Yeah, you need to shoot them in the face, but if your nerves hold and you can get a clear line of sight, not that easy when they're part of a horde, you are rewarded with some nice, clean kills. Instantly makes the EAT all the better as well, it already has a 70 second cooldown and comes in pairs, but the armour downgrade on the charger really elevated it to a must-have tool in higher ranked games.

**BrookM**

New pass has dropped and I had enough medals for the new lasgun, it's a lot of fun to use and decently powerful to boot! Only downside is that it takes a second to spin up and that it can build up heat real fast if you're not careful enough. Also, all three sets of armour have a 95% resistance against arc weapon damage. You know what this means..

Maybe we'll see special fire resistance in the future, making the use of napalm and flamethrowers even more rewarding.

**Grimskul**

I was really psyched up to see that the sickle was coming back since I used it as my main weapon back in the first Helldivers. I'm glad to hear that the general consensus that it's actually decent and good! Good to see there's some more variety beyond just the shotgun meta, and I'm hoping to try it out later tonight.

Also, the arc resistance armour is just in time for me having bought the tesla towers, it's definitely useful when doing those silo defense missions.

**Olthannon**

Very interested to see what happens now that we successfully murderised all the bots. I'm sure something dreadful will happen. All we will become Hell farmers.

**BrookM**

Bots are gone, bugs are almost put back in their place, we've all but won the war, rejoice! With a new warbond dropping on Thursday and all quiet on the western front, oh yes, big things are happening soon. 😁

It's a pretty ballsy move of the devs to temporarily remove the bots from play. I've got no access to spoilers or anything, but the way I see it, either the bots are making a big move for Cyber-stan with their stealth ships, or the Illuminate are finally making their big move.

I've seen the stealth ships in low orbit, others have reported our ships engaging these invisible adversaries and I've been shot by a blue laser out of nowhere, that was an unexpected and fun event alright.

**Gert**

Invisible ships? Blue lasers? Sounds like you need to visit your Democracy Officer Helldiver because that's nonsense.

**BrookM**

And the bug order has also been smashed, will be a few more days until we get the medals, but all in all, the game is nicely set up for the next stage of the campaign. I do hope the bots make a return soon, still need to bag me a gunship and mobile factory at some point.

Played my first full set of missions on hard today, got the full extract achievement as well, courtesy of a very competent random that rounded out our three stack. Mate was level 21 but held his own so damned well and eyyyy, he's also part of the LAS-16 Sickle squad.

Just wish the Spear would be less dopey with the target locks, quite a few chargers could've been nailed if it locked on a bit earlier.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
And it's happening! Hopefully soon we'll get some major orders that'll help us unlock the new vehicles and EXO-variants.