re: Helldivers 2 - Playstation Breaks Its PC Launch Record

New patch just dropped:

Balancing
Enemies:
The amount of heavily armored targets that spawn on higher difficulties, especially for Terminids, have been a big discussion point online and internally. The intent is for groups to have to bring some form of anti-tank capability but not to the degree previously needed.

To that end we have reduced the spawn rate of Chargers and Bile Titans on difficulties 7 and up.

In addition we have reduced the risk of spawn spikes of Chargers and Bile Titans.

Please note that we have changed the distribution of enemy types, not reduced difficulty. Expect other enemy types to appear in greater numbers instead.

We are humbled by the community's ability to find things like Chargers “leg meta” in our game, however spending your heavy anti tank weapons on legs instead of the obvious weak point seems counter to expectation.

We are not changing anything regarding the Charger’s legs, we are however lowering the health of the Charger’s head. It should now be at a point where a well placed shot from a Recoilless Rifle or EAT-17 instantly kills a charger.

Together with the unfortunately undocumented change of last patch that increased the armor penetration ability of less well placed shots for EAT-17s and Recoilless Rifle shots, Chargers should now be easier to handle by well equipped groups.

Gameplay
"Electronic Countermeasures" operation modifier, which had a chance of giving you a random stratagem instead of the one you input, has been removed in order to be reworked, and will be reintroduced in a future iteration. We found that this modifier wasn’t communicated clearly enough and overall caused more frustration than excitement with the way it was currently implemented. This change was made in 1.000.100 but was unintentionally omitted from the patch notes.

Fixes
Fixed missing text on several HUD / UI elements.
Fixed several subtitle / VO mismatches in the news videos.
Fixed various crashes that occurred mid-gameplay and when deploying to missions.

Known Issues
Game crashes when attempting to use a stim while inside an Exosuit.
Pink artifacts may appear in the sky when setting off large explosions.
Automaton Dropship seemingly disappears and slides in after being shot down.
Shots from arc-based weapons may not count towards kills in post-mission stats.
Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code.
Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the friend requests tab.
Players may be unable to select loadout or return to ship when joining a multiplayer game session via PS5 Activity Card.
The Exosuit can destroy itself with rockets if it fires while turning.
Text chat box display is obstructed by the cinematic letterboxing during extraction.
Some people are unable to accept friend requests. This is mostly an issue cross platform

Patch Notes

Based on that change, I might switch from shield backpack to rover backpack since the rover can deal with the lesser enemies if they're spawning more frequently and in greater quantities.

Also it seems like EATs and Recoilless can pretty reliably one-shot Chargers if you hit them in the face. Also, seems like Flamethrower may be even more effective than it was before due to the Chargers taking more face damage.

Kinda want to try a loadout with EATs, Grenade Launcher, and Rover Backpack, but not sure what I'd use in the fourth stratagem slot, and that loadout would require me to keep swapping EATs/GL and I feel like I'd wind up losing the GL in the chaos

I can only really speak to use of the shield backpack in bug missions because I think I've done a total of 2 robot missions in the ~60 hours I've played the game

I like the shield backpack because I think (even after the slight nerf) that it greatly helps in preventing dumb deaths due to friendly fire and spitting bugs. Usually it can take a hit or two which otherwise would have killed me, and that allows me to run away and regroup without getting killed. It also provides an extra layer of protection if you like running light armor to increase mobility/stamina.

With that said, maybe you don't need it if your Rover is dealing with mobs of smaller enemies, but I don't think I've taken the backpack off since I unlocked it.

quote:

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Do you run light armor and shield and just try to avoid damage?

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Before the armor got "fixed" and before the first balancing patch, I ran light armor and the shield backpack.

When the first balancing patch came out that "fixed" armor, broke the spawn rates, and nerfed the Railgun, Breaker, etc., I switched to the medium armor that gives you a 50% chance of surviving fatal damage and the shield backpack.

Now I'm not sure what I'll run. I want to see what the spawn rates are like and whether Chargers are easier to deal with. Also, the new warbond comes out on Thursday, so I want to see what new weapons the devs make available to us.

quote:

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Is Guard Dog really useless on higher difficulties

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Yes, and i shoot them on sight.

So many crashes right now. I'd rather them clean this up then add anything new

Yes. It even has problems shutting down

The arc damage mitigation sounds like something for the illuminate

I'm not all that excited about the new gear as it's geared specifically towards electricity weapons (which I don't care for). I think there was one helmet with a buff, but other than that the capes and other helms were just more ornamental eye-candy.

My nephew has been out of the game for a couple of weeks and logged into try a Suicide-level Termanid mission from the Major Order. This is a kid who had solo'd a Helldive prior to the game going viral. He had no idea they had raised the difficulty by increasing spawns, but he quickly learned as he was running this solo.

I got in with him right as he was trying to start defending the 2nd silo, it was a slaughter with multiple bile titans eventually coming at us at toward the end of the defense. We finally got the 2nd one done but just getting to the 3rd took so long that the 2nd one went back offline (I didn't know that could happen lolol).

A team which works well together and coordinates their strats and modules could handle a Suicide level, but it just wasn't going to happen with my level 23 arse and his just logging back in for the first time since the mob increase.