Helldivers 2 has managed to pull itself back from a balancing disaster, against all odds

I’ve been highly skeptical of Arrowhead Games’ ability to “fix” Helldivers 2 in just two months’ time. Seeing how the game’s balancing was handled early on put me off of the game and I was not expecting the 60-day patch to do much.

Imagine my surprise, then, upon seeing not one but two incredible balancing updates pushed out to re-develop the meta to an enjoyable level. And, honestly, there are no two ways to describe the state Helldivers 2 is currently in: the game is gosh darn fun. There’s no telling what might be the next step for Arrowhead Games’ flagship shooter, and there are some caveats, but the game is now in a renaissance, and I’m thrilled to have regained some trust in the developers.

Helldivers 2 is now more fun than ever before, but can it stay that way?

I don’t play Helldivers 2 the way it’s meant to be played. There’s a small sub-community of people playing Helldivers 2 solo, but we do so with the full expectation that we won’t be taking on the highest difficulties or progressing efficiently.

It’s fine, really.

What wasn’t fine was how egregiously punishing the game got, even at low difficulties, if you took a slightly suboptimal loadout into a mission. Certain enemies, such as the Charger, essentially mandated that your fireteam had to take dedicated anti-armor weapons, no matter what. This, in turn, defined your primary and secondary kit as well. Remember: there’s a long history of nerfs to Helldivers 2, and though not all were unwarranted, players were still left in a situation where the vast majority of gear was wholly unviable.

All of this was before Arrowhead substantially powered up both the Automatons and the Bugs via the Escalation of Freedom, on top of locking the cool new content behind the new, highest difficulty mode.

None of this was necessarily rolled back. Instead, Arrowhead delivered an incredible roster of buffs to player weapons and armor, making more kit viable than the game had even on launch day. As it stands, the odds are good that you could take anything into a mission and still be a force to be reckoned with. This is a huge shift in how matches play out, both in solo and in fireteam modes.

What has actually changed in Helldivers 2 after the 60-day patches?

In the broadest sense possible, Arrowhead Games has done three things with the last couple of balancing patches for Helldivers 2:

• Retrofitted the vast majority of the game’s arsenal into relevance via buffs.
• Made enemy resistances, AI behavior, and spawning setups far more reasonable and sensible.
• Stopped leaving inflammatory comments willy-nilly.

Balancing a game isn’t a zero-sum consideration, and while you might expect Helldivers 2 to be exceedingly easy now, that’s not quite the case. Helldiver troops still get cut down at a moment’s notice. Bad positioning will result in mission losses and unnecessary deaths, and though enemy forces did get some nerfs, they are no pushovers unless you’re playing on the lowest possible difficulty.

The key thing that’s changed is that you’re no longer beholden to one or two specific loadouts for every single use case. As long as you keep a balanced arsenal where one of your weapons deals with chaff, one takes on heavy enemies, and one serves a gadget-like niche (i.e. the Stim Pistol), you’ll be able to do some serious damage.

Loadout variety is a huge consideration in a game where we regularly get awesome guns and gadgets. Having new flamethrowers only for them to feel like spruced-up matchsticks was a bad look, and I’m thrilled that Arrowhead managed to come back from that.

Honestly, Helldivers 2 is now fun, not because it’s easy, but because it lets you interact with its sandbox in more ways than ever before. The “experience shift” that Arrowhead promised worked, almost ridiculously well.

Can Arrowhead maintain the balance that’s now been struck?

This truly is the ultimate question we need to keep asking over and over again as we proceed into Helldivers 2‘s hopefully years-long live-service setup. Helldivers 2 was released to immediate acclaim, only to then be ground into something less interesting and exciting by subsequent balancing attempts.

These balancing attempts came from a good place, but they showed the community that Arrowhead doesn’t necessarily know how to make players happy and the game fun. Even after two massive buff-oriented patches, I can’t shake off the feeling that we’re just riding a high that won’t last long.

Potential hidden nerfs aside for a bit, there’s another big consideration: can there be too much of a good thing in this context? And the answer is yes, certainly. The original Helldivers was balanced on a knife’s edge (not always perfectly, mind), where both the enemies and the players were extremely powerful and capable. The challenge was knowing how to best use these powerful tools you had at your disposal and how to avoid the enemies’ strongest weapons.

I dare say that we’re in a similarly precarious golden era for Helldivers 2, too. The enemies are challenging, but the players have the potential of being every bit as punishing as the full brunt of the Automaton and/or Bug forces. How long will Arrowhead Games be able to maintain this balance? Are we just one Warbond away from completely dismantling everything the 60-day patch(es) delivered?

Given Arrowhead’s track record, I’m not yet convinced this isn’t a fluke. I want to believe Helldivers 2 will now keep up its balancing act to stay the game it is now. But it will take a handful of other balancing updates before I can be sure that I’m happy with what Arrowhead’s offering. And I know I’m not the only one who’s still on the fence.