Player numbers begin to return.
Image credit: Arrowhead
Helldivers 2 yesterday received its latest update that massively buffs player weapons and rebalances the game in their favour.
However, players still aren’t completely satisfied and are requesting a new harder difficulty level to compensate. And, creative director and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt agrees.
A Helldivers 2 fan responded to Pilestedt’s call for feedback on X (formerly Twitter), stating: “Everything is great but we need a new harder difficulty now.” Pilestedt responded simply: “I agree!”
As part of re-balancing efforts, many primary weapons have received a damage boost, an increase to their magazine size, or a shorter cooldown, while support weapons and Stratagems have received significant damage boosts.
Further, partial damage dealt to enemies has been increased and Helldivers now take less damage from headshots.
“With these changes, along with an upgraded Helldiver arsenal, enemy adjustments, and more consistent damage, the overall difficulty may slightly decrease. We’ll be monitoring this closely and will listen to the community on how you think it feels,” wrote the developers in the update’s extensive patch notes.
Everything is great but we need a new harder difficulty now.
— Bunny Asap (@BunnyAsap) September 17, 2024
The update also brings a new Galactic War feature where strategically important assets are displayed on the map, as well as a new Emote Wheel feature, and other changes and bug fixes.
What’s more, the update has brought back a surge in players.
In May, we reported the game’s peak concurrent players had taken a significant hit and its average players had dropped by 62 percent.
Yesterday, with the update’s release, Helldivers 2 reached a peak of 68,380 players (according to SteamDB). That’s a far cry from its launch days of 458,709 peak concurrent players, but still double the number of players from the last couple of months.
