Player sentiment around Helldivers 2 is at an all time low. After an astronomical PC launch for publisher PlayStation, developer Arrowhead has spent the last six months nerfing the popular weapons into the ground. It’s hard to get excited about the co-op antics when everything keeps changing, especially when patches make playing feel worse. Players are so fed up that Helldivers 2 is once again getting review bombed, albeit on a much smaller scale than during the PSN fiaco. That said, Arrowhead has a plan.
Right now, Helldivers 2 is sitting at ‘mostly negative’ in recent reviews on Steam. Just 39% of the last 12,500 reviews are positive, as players voice concerns about the current state of the game. The last major Helldivers 2 review bombing run came from PlayStation’s short-lived PSN requirement, and while the current string of reviews isn’t nearly as explosive, they don’t look good.
Players lament the constant string of weapon nerfs, the ever-changing meta, and overbalancing from Arrowhead. “This is a PvE game, and anyone who recommends a nerf to any gun is a saboteur to this game’s full potential,” one review writes. “I love this game, but the devs seem to get joy from taking all the fun out of it,” another adds.
Arrowhead is aware of this shift in community sentiment. Right before Helldivers 2 dropped to mostly negative, Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt took to Discord to outline what the team is doing with the next big patch. After the Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom update missed the mark, this sounds like good news.
“I have been working closely with the team to look at the game experience (balance mostly),” Pilestedt says in the Discord. “We are confident that the update that we are creating will see a significant meta shift and bring the game into a state where the playfulness takes the front seat and challenge is secondary. I have had a good time with the experience shift, and it is closer to the original intent of the game and what it was at launch.”
This statement didn’t instill confidence in some players, so Pilestedt addressed how Arrowhead was too focused on the discussion of the Helldivers 2 meta and balance after launch. This “replaced our focus on creating a fun, playful, and fantasy-driven experience,” Pilestedt said. He also admits that this next update is coming “too late” after the negatively recieved changes from the Escalation of Freedom update, but says the team is “doubling down on QA this time around to not fuck it up.”
Arrowhead plans to make a plethora of weapon changes with this next Helldivers 2 update, but these changes are part of a wider problem that the new spate of negative Steam reviews highlights. Ever since Helldivers 2 came out Arrowhead has been nerfing guns, buffing enemies, and messing with the core balance. This makes sense for competitive multiplayer games, but Helldivers 2 is a co-op PvE shooter, so we’re left with weapons that are suddenly much less effective and enemies that are too strong in the name of balance.
Every time I try to play Helldivers 2 now, the difficulty level I’m used to is completely different, the weapons I’m comfortable with aren’t the same, and the enemies are far too aggressive. Arrowhead has spent the six months since launch over-balancing Helldivers 2, and not only has the game been worse for it, but players are fed up.
If you’re jumping back into the fray and want some help, we’ve put together all the best Helldivers 2 stratagems and Helldivers 2 weapons for you. You need to make the most of both if you want to push throw the hardest difficulties.
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