The newest Helldivers 2 patch is memorably titled 01.000.400, however for my cash, it is hovering on the brink of being one among your gold-varnished “X.0” updates of observe. It provides a good few mechanics and makes varied substantial changes to Arrowhead and Sony’s liberty-humping, cheerily xenocidal squad shooter.
These embrace making provide strains and assault origins seen on the Galactic Struggle map, so you possibly can (in idea) minimize off invasions at their root, along with an absolute slew of stratagem and weapon balancing modifications, an accompanying tsunami of tweaks for Automaton and Terminid enemies, and a constructive landslide of, errrrm, reworks for planetary maps. Additionally, invite-only lobbies! Although they’re at present solely localised in English.
It is late right here, I nonetheless have jetlag from SGF and Geoff Keighley or one among his brokers appears to have given me some form of plague, fortunately not Covid, so allow me to dive in and pull out a couple of issues from the total patch notes, moderately than committing to a complete digest. One factor that catches my eye is that they’ve adjusted enemy spawning so that you’re going to get fewer closely armoured enemies, corresponding to Bile Titans or Hulks, and extra smaller, squishier enemies, with a view to creating your techniques much less monotonous. “Our intent is to ease up on the demand of anti-tank weapons and by having extra of the opposite enemies give a greater incentive for the group to deliver stratagems and weapons that maintain hordes,” the builders clarify.
This want for selection additionally informs their tweaks to the sport’s Stratagems. “With these steadiness modifications we wished to buff up a number of the weaker stratagems to make them extra viable and add extra chance for selection within the loadouts,” the submit goes on. “We additionally modified a couple of to make them extra constant, however the aim was to maintain an identical or greater energy degree.”
As regards the above Galactic Struggle stuff, Arrowhead observe that “provide strains have been beforehand not proven on the Galactic Struggle map to cut back litter and enhance readability”. The builders are, nonetheless, eager to show the sport’s table-toppy metagame workings to gamers and encourage us all to strategise correctly moderately than dogpiling whichever world begins trending on Twitter. “You’ll now additionally be capable to see which planet an assault is originating from, probably permitting for the neighborhood to cease the assault at its supply,” the Steam submit suggests.
Final however not least, the cavalry is lastly coming for stealthy solo Helldivers corresponding to myself, as the sport’s crops will now really display screen individuals from view. “Vegetation that is massive sufficient to sluggish the participant now has an additional operate,” the submit reads. “When contained in the vegetation helldivers will likely be more durable to detect, decreasing their detection vary by enemies. This impact stacks with different detection decreasing results corresponding to nighttime, being crouched or susceptible, or issues such because the scout armor passive.”
A meaty replace, by all that is Tremendous-Democratic! I am certain the web’s Pandemonium-Dippers will discover a lot to chew over and complain about, for the cycle of suggestions and updates should proceed to spin, although hopefully it’s going to be nothing as extreme as what occurred when Sony insisted everyone get a PSN account and successfully banned complete international locations from the sport. The one factor it is lacking, actually, is a brand new enemy faction of some variety.
