Helldivers 2 is getting a new “Chemical Agent” Stratagem next week, but you’ll literally have to pay or grind for it.
If the goal is bringing back players, it’s definitely not the approach I would have taken. If the goal is to just continue milking the existing user base, then it will have no effect.
Bringing folks back is them making weapons suck less again. I am definitely going to log back in on the 17th to try all the weapon buffs, see if any of the ones I had high hopes for are fun now that they can actually kill things. If it’s fun again I’ll grind out some super credits and get the warbond just like always. If it’s not fun enough I’ll go back to other games. Same as always.
I don’t fully agree with people’s idea of what the weapons should be to make it fun. Though I completely agree that your interest in the game is probably how a ton of people are with it now.
Helldivers is a more niche game than it was at first glance. The gameplay loop isn’t for everyone and specifically the gameplay loop is 10x better with 4 known friends in comms playing together.
I think the nerfs to weapons (flamethrower didn’t actually get nerfed, they just make flames actually work correctly and not penetrate literally everything so you can run around being master chief 1 man god army) actually made the game more like the intention: mid completion rate, success by the skin of your teeth, extraction extremely optional because the divers are just a part of the military industrial meat grinder so the loss of life doesn’t matter. That is what makes for all of the epic moments, not 1 manning level 9 bugs with flamethrower and a jetpack with relative ease.
The game just isn’t made to be as fun solo queueing sadly.
is also the natural progression of a PVE game. You have huge playtimes early on and it falls off hard after the first year when people get board. PvP games always retain players much much better (excl to big to die MMOs)
They continually took away the fun things, if Flameththrowers were truly “fixed” then it was at the worst possible time.
Chose the railgun on first play; Amazing weapon, took down chargers, titans, all of it. It had a huge risk of exploding yourself. Quite a bit of fun honestly.
Railgun now; Even if you manage not to explode yourself, its gonna take 20 shots to kill a titan. Maybe. Chargers? Good luck, 5 shots and you might take out its leg armor. Wtaf?
Eruptor; Beast for bots. Took out missle launchers in a decent amount of time, you also would kill yourself if you shot it to close.
Now: No risk sure, but you’re not gonna dismantle bots with it.
Personally; I liked the guns being OP, you felt like a true war hero raging through, whos really only susceptible to being overrun. So you play careful, you retreat when bugs are going insane, you make sure to do objectives the right way. BUT YOU GOT TO HAVE FUN WITH WEAPONS YOU CHOSE.
Now its either play the meta weapons, or yeah, you’re gonna fail every single base defense mission ever. Even when you always play with 3 other buddies in a discord call.
Seriously, we went from base missions being a 100% success on level 5, and being insanely fun and tricky at 7. Now? Yeah, its a 100% for sure way to kill your operation even at level 5 because the guns simply suck ass.
Honestly if they didn’t go so overboard on some of the nerfs people wouldn’t have cared as much and would’ve continued playing. Like the grenade pistol rework was not that bad and actually made it better in some ways. But most of the other nerfs weren’t justified. For example the flamer was good for keeping enemies at bay but its reload time, slow aiming speed and limited range made it so that there was an actual risk meaning you couldn’t just solo any but that jumped at you.
There were also alot of duct tape solution nerfs like the railgun and eruptor which were bugged(both did way more damage than they actually should’ve) and instead of fixing them they just removed/nerfed crucial aspects to how they work. Because of all of that alot of guns were rarely if ever used, with people sticking to a few select weapons and not experimenting at all since most weapons would never be as effective as the meta weapons people would use.
