Terminids Bust Loose While Helldivers 2 Community Debates Alleged Fun Nerf

Helldivers 2’s latest patch, 01.000.300, dropped yesterday. It introduced sweeping balancing changes to the game and announced in-universe that the previously placid Terminids had broken free of their humane enclosures. While these once-captive sources of E-710 (which Socialists will suggest is just “oil” spelt backwards) run rampant, the Helldivers community debates whether developer Arrowhead may have introduced a fun nerf.

Plenty of weapons saw buffs and were made more viable among a raft of balancing changes. Still, the nerfs to beloved equipment have set the hardcore community, who play on the game’s highest difficulty settings, into a bit of a stir. For example, the LAS-99 Quasar Cannon, an extremely reliable anti-armour energy weapon introduced during the dark early days of the ongoing Automaton conflict, has increased its recharge time by a whopping five seconds, an eternity on the battlefield. Similarly, the workhorse that was the LAS-16 Sickle has had its maximum number of magazines reduced from six to three, a massive reduction in effectivety to what was a widely employed weapon.

Another point of contention is the increased number of enemy patrols solo players and understrength squads will face, significantly improving resistance. Arrowhead addressed this issue, explaining:

“We unintendedly had non-linear scaling of the patrol spawns, so they didn’t spawn as often as they should have when there were fewer than four players. The intention is that one player has 1/4th of the patrols compared to 4 players, but it used to be that they had 1/6th. The scaling of patrol spawns was exponential before, and that felt good on four-player lobbies but a bit too empty when playing with fewer players, especially when playing solo. So now we made the scaling of patrols linear, which means if you play solo, you will get 25% of the patrols compared to a 4-player lobby instead of having about 17% of the patrols.”