The official Helldivers 2 Discord server recently set up a poll channel to gauge players' opinions on various updates and features, and after seven hours its inaugural polls indicate that the game's community hopes to see a little more oomph from its Warbonds and marksman rifles.
At 4:47am ET on April 12, community manager Baskinator published a poll asking, "What do you think about Marksman Rifles in Helldivers 2?" Bear in mind, this comes on the heels of a new marksman rifle that's so bad it almost feels like the bots are telling us to use it so we lose ground. Here's how the responses are looking at the time of writing, with 26,757 votes:
- They need a rebalance because they're underpowered - 77% with 20,658 votes
- They need a rebalance because they're overpowered - 0% with 81 (brave) votes
- They feel fine to me - 7% with 1,868votes
- I wouldn't know because I never use them - 16% with 4,169 votes
In a separate poll released at 7:21am ET the same day, Baskinator asked, "How do you feel about the new Democratic Detonation Warbond?" The current 24,800 responses are similarly, but less extremely skewed:
- After an eventful year, Helldivers 2 devs hope "it will be less of a bumpy road when it comes to release accuracy" - but Arrowhead is still "prepared to take risks"
- Helldivers 2's Killzone-inspired sniper "could maybe use some tweaking," creative director admits, but "weapons are what weapons are" and "balance doesn't matter"
- I love it - 29% with 7,215 votes
- I hate it - 3% with 609 votes
- It's good, but I feel like something is missing - 65% with 16,151 votes
- It's good, but I feel overwhelmed by content - 3% with 812 votes
The obvious caveat here is that, even though 25,000 players is nothing to sneeze at, this is a small sample size relative to the millions of people who've played Helldivers 2. The game's official Discord is also likely to attract more dedicated and hardcore players whose opinions may differ from your average user, so these responses may not reflect the whole community's feelings.
That being said, this is still a statistically valuable set of responses, and there's a consistent tone to the polls. There were a few thousand fewer responses when I first glanced at the Discord, but the percentages have remained almost exactly the same. Anecdotally, the polls also line up with feedback and discussions I've seen rise to the top of Reddit and other social media.
Most people really don't seem to like marksman rifles, and many players were hoping for something a little more thematically exciting from the Helldivers 2 Democratic Detonation Warbond (some annoying bugs with the new stuff haven't helped reception either, I'm sure). It'll be interesting to see if and when we see changes, either to existing content or future content like the next Warbond, based on these player trends.
The secret to Helldivers 2's success? The Last of Us and God of War designer points to immersive element "I don't see people talking about enough."
