Helldivers 2 (PS5/PC)

[hudson]

Lacks content? We are at war, godammit!

[Tobal]

To be fair it is true, there not much left to discover once you hit level 20+ and there just isn't a loadout meta unless your trying make youtube video about soloing level 9 by sneaking around. Not a problem for me, i'm not playing it enough to burn out on it as level 5 matches tend have people wanting to do a full 30/40 mins of intense bug splattering/robot crushing every second to hit every objective which is pretty exhausting. At least at level 5 you can't get away with mortars and grenade launchers so you never see them, and my disgust for players that constantly brought them into the expeditions at level 4 will make me never go back.

[fishbowlhead]

Year there's a lack of content after hundreds of hours, shock, so stop playing!!

[hudson]

I only play with friends and it's an absolute riot. We are recruiting more. Saving them from solo/random tomfoolery.

[Neon Ignition]

It's definitely not a game to spam hundreds of hours into. The way things are set up there's no real levelling as such and no overall progression to be made despite how it's presented with the planet liberations. The experience hinges almost entirely on the gameplay loop and how long that lasts. I've made no jump through difficulties, I know some enemy types at gated behind them so by holding back (admittedly my time spent will be a lot less than others too) I know I've still got new stuff to see. I've essentially been rinsing a difficulty before moving on so I've still been playing Level 3. I really need to move up to Level 4 missions as L3 is a cakewalk, it's just low stress at the end of a day

I don't need new planets adding though, there's plenty in the game especially given most sectors haven't been opened yet. Perhaps the biggest longterm issue there is that they are aesthetically varied and often nice looking in parts but for the most part it's an appearance only difference so even though you move between planets some repetitive vibes appear if you play for too long. I think Mech's will be fun, I'm not really interested in them adding vehicles that focus on getting around faster as I feel like the on foot focus is pretty central to the experience. It's one of those games that evokes the similar air as the Battlefield 4 years (and what that franchise has lost) where it's the emergent moment to moment instances that give it it's hold so even to watch on Youtube it's not that exciting whilst experiencing the moment yourself unexpectedly is.

[Tobal]

playing devil's advocate here, but i see what they are saying.

it's not hundreds of hours though, with all the server problems, playing solo queue and putting up with terrible/toxic players it took me about 25 hours to hit lvl20, probably alot faster for those with premade teams. I would even say you will see everything the game offers by level 10 aside from the useless strats and weapons higher level players won't use (which i would say is good 70% of the loadout) when they join you/join them and the community being stuck on the same planets over and over doesn't help either, bug side hasn't moved on since the first week and even got reset back because of the reemergence event.

[Neon Ignition]

Given the much higher numbers of players than the devs were expecting I did expect the sectors to clear faster than they have. At current rate it's hard to see the map changing much unless the devs cheat it into doing so

[hudson]

I am currently working towards getting the shield generator pack and Railgun which both unlock at level 20 (I'm currently level 19). This should see me good for "endgame" loadout.

[hudson]

Embedded Tweet

[fishbowlhead]

I saw one in a match, they look epic fun but I can see l them taking 2 slots when they get released.

[hudson]

New (minor) patch:

Minor Patch 01.000.100
Fresh new patch notes Helldivers!

Major Updates

• Planetary Hazards active
• Many planets now have additional environmental challenges that will appear at random while you are deployed, from fire tornadoes to meteor showers and many more.

Balancing

Eradicate Missions

• Eradicate missions now require more kills and enemies spawn more often. The time to complete the mission was previously shorter than intended and should now usually take twice as long to complete.

Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons

• Breaker: Decreased magazine capacity from 16 to 13, increased recoil from 30 to 55
• Railgun: Decreased armor penetration, decreased damage against durable enemy parts
• Flamethrower: Increased damage per second by 50%
• Laser Cannon: Increased damage against durable enemy parts, increased armor penetration, improved ergonomics
• Punisher: Increased total ammo capacity from 40 to 60, increased stagger force, increased damage from 40 per bullet to 45 per bullet
• Breaker Spray & Pray: Increased armor penetration, increased fire rate from 300 to 330, increased number of pellets from 12 to 16 per shot, decreased magazine size from to 32 to 26

Stratagems

• Energy Shield Backpack: Increased delay before recharging
• 380mm and 120mm Orbital Barrages: Increased duration of the bombardment, decreased spread

Fixes

• Fixed armor rating values not reducing damage as intended.
• Fixed certain Bug Holes (including Stalker Nests) that were unnecessarily hard to destroy.
• Fixed anti-aliasing toggle not working on PS5.
• Balanced lighting across all planets to solve cases where the game was too dark.
• Improved flashlight efficacy.
• Increased visibility during “sand rain” weather on Erata Prime.
• Updated tutorial materials and lighting.
• Improved cases where some materials could look blurry if "Lighting" graphic setting was set to "Low".
• Fixed timing issues that could occur in the “Extract E-710” primary objective.
• Changed button interaction behavior for buttons in bunker POIs. Helldivers will now let go of the button after holding it for a few seconds.
• Fixed some cases of large assets floating if the ground beneath them was blown up.
• Helldivers standing next to ICBMs during launch will get properly toasty with a chance of not-so-spontaneous combustion.
• Fixed unthrowable snowballs after ragdolling.
• Fixed being able to use grenades after drowning.
• Camera no longer locked on the player's own corpse and blocking spectator mode.
• Helldivers now take damage from fire, gas etc. generated by other players.
• Armor no longer stretches when dismembered.

Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

• Game may crash after dropping several high power stratagems in succession.
• Picking up items from caches may cause characters to freeze in place for an extended period of time.
• Picking up items from bunkers and caches in quick succession may render one of the items unpickable.
• Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code.
• Players may be unable to select loadout or return to ship when joining a multiplayer game session via PS5 Activity Card.
• Mission objective HUD displays different numbers for client and host during some missions.
• Default armor is always shown while viewing the warbond, regardless of the armor that player has equipped.
• Text chat box display is obstructed by the cinematic letterboxing during extraction.
• Some text in the HUD/UI is missing or not displaying correctly.
• Players may experience issues when many players attempt to login and/or play at the same time:
• Login rate limiting
• Players may become disconnected during play
• Various UI issues may appear when the game interacts with servers
• Some games may not be joinable by others for a short period of time

Release Captain Carlberg out

[hudson]

If find this one interesting

• Flamethrower: Increased damage per second by 50%
• ...
• Helldivers now take damage from fire, gas etc. generated by other players.

[Tobal]

they are nerfing my loadout

Breaker Shotgun should still be fine, i rarely use it in full auto. As long as the railgun can stripe armour off a chargers leg in 2 shots, i don't care much about its actual damage as i switch to the breaker to finish it off.

The damage increase to flamethrower makes it more viable as it was my go to for a while against chargers around level 8-13 before going back to anti-tank till i got the railgun.

[hudson]

Tell me about it! My poor Breaker. I will have to check it out tonight.

[Tobal]

Well that patch seems to have broke to much stuff, i got exploded in to walls twice where i had to kill myself, the flamethrower seems to randomly instant kill you, lost count the amount of times i just suddenly died at full HP for no good reason, and of the 2 missions i did the last one crashes on calling the extraction killing 35 mins of work, ffs.

I need more experimental time, but i think the railgun is dead. Breaker is more annoying to use but still strong. Flamethrower just cooks everything, but is worthless on attacking compounds, to many objects just block it when it shouldn't like chain-link fences, or 2 foot walls.