When Helldivers 2 first launched on February 8, 2024, on PlayStation and Steam, many players praised it as one of the best co-op horde shooters in the market with its fun and chaotic gameplay. Not only did it have a solid gameplay foundation, but its overall theming and community support of an ongoing galactic war elevated the game to new heights. However, as time went by, the game steadily declined in player count due to decisions made by Arrowhead Studios that slowly degraded the community’s sentiment on Helldivers 2.
Here, we’ll take a look at some of the balance decisions that Arrowhead has made, from the weapons to the many enemies in the game that were deemed controversial. One of the bigger pain points in Helldivers 2 today is that Arrowhead likes to give more power to enemies than giving players more viable options to deal with them, which ultimately makes the game harder for casual audiences.
How does Helldivers 2 balance everything?
The core idea of Helldivers 2 is that every weapon and Stratagem fulfills a role in combat. Some are best used in the long-range, while others do better in short-range. Others are meant for clearing out groups of weaker enemies while some Stratagems excel at killing armored elite targets. To make up for their power, these tools are weaker in certain aspects to ensure that they do not overshadow other weapons in their roles. This balance of power ensures that every weapon has a place in the game’s sandbox and that players will always find each weapon fun to use.
When a weapon does everything and answers most of the game’s problems, it becomes overpowered because most players want to use the best weapons for any scenario. This is understandable since the whole point of balance is to ensure that every weapon excels in its purpose.
Helldivers 2’s First Nerf: The Railgun
The Railgun support weapon was originally considered to be the best weapon in the game when it first came out. It had the best armor-piercing capability, ammo economy and overall ease of use. It could easily dispatch Chargers, Bile Titans, and many heavy Automaton units. It was the staple weapon for most players, but Arrowhead deemed the weapon too strong in the meta and nerfed its armor-piercing capability.
This nerf was highly divisive among the community, but for a time, it was a justifiable one as it overshadowed other anti-tank weapons. This also solidified the idea that weaker weapons must receive buffs to make them more relevant in the game.
Slugger Nerf
In the Automaton front, precision weapons are far more valuable than horde-clearing ones like the Machine Guns. The Slugger is a precision slug shotgun that perfectly occupies this niche due to the nature of Automaton units having innate armor, which requires precision targeting. Compared to the Diligence and the Diligence Counter Sniper, the Slugger fills their role better than the dedicated marksman rifles that the game offers. In response, Arrowhead nerfed the Slugger by reducing its damage, destruction value and stagger value.
Once again, the community had asked for buffs to the DMRs to compensate for the Slugger nerf. While they were buffed, it wasn’t enough to fully engage players into using the Diligence weapons over other guns.
Eruptor Nerf
This nerf was negatively received as it was part of the Democratic Detonation Warbond and had carved itself a nice niche of dealing with groups, thanks to its AoE damage. Of course, the weapon is innately unwieldy due to its size, but players stuck with the weapon since it’s powerful in its niche. As a slow bolt action sniper rifle that has worse handling, its damage was powerful enough. However, the weapon had its capabilities cut in half by having its AoE shrapnel removed, which severely cut its use on both Automaton and Terminid fronts.
Fire Damage Nerfs
Though it wasn’t intentional, flame weapons in Helldivers have been indirectly nerfed, as this came a few days after the release of the Freedom’s Flame Warbond. Many felt that this nerf was a knee-jerk reaction to the Warbond as they felt it might overperform in the sandbox, but players have yet to experience the new weapons in their best state.
The change to fire projectiles was that they are now affected by realistic projectile blocking. Previously, the flamethrower could penetrate through Charger armor, which made it extremely useful against Terminids. However, its lack of range made the flamethrower less useful against Automatons.
This change makes flamethrowers less viable against Terminids since their power is reliant on clearing both Chargers and smaller targets in close range. That change was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back.
Arrowhead Games promises change
After the backlash, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani admits that the studio has taken a heavy-handed approach to nerfing weapons. With the new Escalation of Freedom update granting a harder difficulty in a state where players have less viable weapons to play with, this only added fuel to the fire. Jorjani has taken to many social media platforms, promising that the developers will meet player expectations more in the future.
