Whenever Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead releases a major balance update for PC and PlayStation 5, the community discusses various nerfs and improvements while dealing with the evolving meta. Following the release of patch 01,000,300 this week, which tweaked a long list of weapons, gimmicks, and enemies, the debate has been particularly vocal.
The change to the beloved Quasar Cannon is just one change that has led to claims that Arrowhead has diluted the fun in Helldivers 2. The game's Discord and subreddit are particularly interesting as Arrowhead's community managers address concerns about nerfs even as they point out that in reality, the latest The patch makes significant improvements to a number of major weapons. For example, the Arbitrator has a huge buff, as do Punisher Plasma and Counter Sniper. The regular Guard Dog and Railgun also got some love. Other weapons have been rebalanced with a mix of buffs and nerfs.
As controversy continues over Helldivers 2's apparent nerfs, Arrowhead has addressed another aspect of the patch that has sparked controversy: single-player leagues.
In the patch notes released this week, Arrowhead said that the number of leagues has increased when there are fewer than four players. The fewer players, the greater the change. For four-player missions, there is no change compared to before. But “the biggest noticeable change will be for solo players who face higher difficulties.”
Basically, Helldivers 2 is now tougher for teams of three and under, and tougher for solo players. Helldivers 2 is designed to be played cooperatively, ideally in teams of four, but of course sometimes that's not possible, and indeed there are a lot of players who prefer to play solo, challenging themselves to complete missions alone and the most difficult missions. Difficulties Although Helldivers 2 can be quite difficult when played this way.
After the patch is released, Arrowhead issued a statement Credit is given to design director Niklas Broström, who explained that this change was about correcting a previous error.
“We inadvertently had non-linear scaling for league spawn, so they didn't spawn as often as they should when there were fewer than four players,” Brostrom said. “The intention is for one player to have a quarter of the leagues compared to four players, but it used to be that they would have 1/6.
“The scaling of leagues was huge before, which was fine in four-player lobbies but was a bit empty when playing with fewer players, especially when playing solo. So we've now made the league scaling linear, which means if you're playing alone… You'll get 25% more patrols compared to a four-player lobby instead of about 17% more patrols. There is still a cap on which patrols can appear at the same time, so during situations where we deploy a lot of patrols, such as extractions. Even solo players won't notice the difference. The change was made to make the world feel less empty for single-player or two-player lobbies, especially in high-difficulty missions that were also too easy for solo players compared to our intentions.
“I hope this change makes it clear to everyone – we're not making the game arbitrarily more difficult!”
So, it turns out that Helldivers 2 was unintentionally too easy for solo players, and now it's at the difficulty level Arrowhead always intended.
The correction reaction does not end there. There's also controversy over a major change to recoil: “Bullets that ricochet off heavily armored enemies will now correctly hit the Helldiver who fired them. Trigger discipline is highly recommended.”
after correcting:
The new recoil system sucks🔗is-Beowulf | #HealDivers2 pic.twitter.com/RPO0hJcN8t
– Helldivers 2 Media (@Helldiversmedia) April 30, 2024
Players are now reporting Being killed often by ricochet bullets, but there is confusion about how important this problem is. Videos are circulating on social media, which appear to show players suffering embarrassing deaths at the hands of their own ricocheting projectiles. But some have suggested that there is not much change here. The prevailing theory is that the patch worked so that the player now takes damage from their own bullets and shrapnel when ricocheting, compared to the situation before the patch where they were immune.
If you're looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN's feature on Let me solo her from Helldivers 2the player who answered over 100 SOS beacons as part of a mission to help others.
Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise games of 2024 since its launch in February. Tops the charts on Steam And It reportedly sold about three million copies. According to at least one analyst. It's still growing. paying off Helldivers 2 game review from IGN To find out why it is declining well.
Wesley is the UK news editor for IGN. You can find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can contact Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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