Helldivers 2 has only been out for about a month and has already evolved so much. At first, players were only laying waste to bugs, but now there are also killer robots to fight on the other side of the galaxy. Planets have been liberated, while others have fallen, and divers discovered that they’re more or less working against a lone developer pulling the strings in the game’s ongoing war narrative. An old faction might be returning from the first game and mechs are absolutely arriving any day now to aid the ongoing liberation efforts. Now, Helldivers 2’s latest patch is changing the game again, and even making it live up to its name.
Helldivers 2’s first balance patch, 01.000.100, makes some drastic changes, but few will be as obvious as the new planetary hazards that Arrowhead Game Studios has added. Players jumping into the game after this patch will notice that alongside the bugs and robots, they will now have nature to contend with. As if the odds weren’t already stacked against players on the hardest difficulties, Helldivers 2 will now boast effects like fire tornadoes and meteor showers that occur at random intervals throughout missions. And these are only the phenomena that Arrowhead bothered teasing in the patch notes, throwing in an ominous “and more” that has me worried about the missions I’ll likely undertake this weekend. If there’s a blinding blizzard on some snowy planet, I’m going to lose it.
To make matters worse, Arrowhead is very clearly aware of the quickly formed “meta” loadouts that players have been using to make short work of Helldivers 2’s usually overwhelming odds, and is nerfing them. Changes minimizing the effects of the Breaker and Energy Shield Backpack are among the more drastic tweaks made, but not everything was weakened. Weapons like the flamethrower and laser cannon have actually been made more powerful, and the 120mm and 380mm orbital barrage stratagems have had their bombardment period extended, though their spread has been lessened. This is great news for me, who has continually eaten shit when my friend has dropped the latter stratagem a little too close for comfort.
Additionally, Arrowhead is raising the completion requirement of the Eradication mission type, which has seen an influx of players trying to farm in quickplay and screwing over their teammates by swiftly exiting upon completing the objectives. Not only do players need to kill more enemies now, but those enemies also spawn far more aggressively, which makes the missions “take twice as long to complete” now.
In all seriousness, it’s good to see Arrowhead work so quickly to dismantle the shortcuts players have found to game the system, if only because adhering to Helldivers 2’s nightmarish whims is half the fun of playing it. It’s the rare case where doing exceptionally well at the game seems counterintuitive to enjoying what makes it so special.