It's finally here, Helldivers. Arrowhead's 60-day action plan (or 63-day plan, as it ended up being) to get Helldivers 2 back on track has now drawn to a close, with one big ol' patch full of buffs and fixes to round off the entire thing.
There are, frankly, far too many weapon and Stratagem buffs to mention from the patch notes, with Arrowhead rolling out all the alterations that couldn't be finished in time for the patch released on September 17. In a blog post giving an overview of the action plan, game director Mikael Eriksson confirms that there's now been "a comprehensive balancing pass on over 70 weapons and Stratagems, reworking armor penetration and adjusting enemy armor and health values." Hopefully, these changes will help Helldivers feel as powerful as they've been dreaming of when out in the field delivering managed democracy.
Otherwise, some notable tweaks have been made to the Automatons and Terminids themselves. Those pesky bots were previously pretty impervious to the idea of stealth – even if you were hidden amongst smoke, or out of their line of sight, they could still shoot at you, sometimes firing through walls to do so. Thankfully, this should no longer be the case. As for the bugs, Nursing Spewers and Bile Spewers now have less health in their legs, and Scavengers and Hunters can blow up now if you damage them enough – that's how you know liberty has been served.
- Helldivers 2's funniest feature was removed last year, but it's finally been reinstated – although it won't save you from certain doom anymore
- Helldivers 2's Fallout-grade Ultimatum mini nuke has been nerfed, but maintains its "core identity as a powerhouse" because the devs are "huge fans of big booms booming big"
On top of that, patrol spawns have been altered, so that once you've completed a mission but not yet extracted, they'll continue to spawn in at a higher frequency, but concentrated in the area around the extraction site rather than the entire map. The patch notes also mention that an issue where not enough enemies spawned to successfully complete Eradicate missions has been ironed out.
Even though this is the official end of Arrowhead's action plan, that doesn't mean that the devs are done trying to improve their beloved third-person shooter. Eriksson's blog post states that Arrowhead is "committed to keeping the lines of communication open through regular player surveys, improved patch notes, and more frequent updates via blog posts and streams. We will also continue to expand our closed betas, to make sure we catch valuable feedback early." On top of that, Eriksson thanks fans for their patience and passion.
Arrowhead reveals the Helldivers 2 ideas left on its cutting room floor, from 5-player squads to low-gravity planets and a whole new armor system
Helldivers 2 has a Major Order problem, but the solution isn't simple because "having 100% participation means the MOs will always be won and that introduces other issues"
