Summary
I loveHelldivers 2, despitenot typically playing live-service games. It was barely a blip on my radar when I first heard of the game atPlayStation’s2023State of Playshowcase, though I was intrigued by its clearly satirical tone. Against all odds, upon release, it slowly began to take over my gaming time – I’d log in every day just to finish my personal order and contribute a little to whatever war effort was going on, because I was invested in the constantly evolving storyline.
But Helldivers 2 Has Plenty Of Problems
I’ve become more disillusioned with it over time, as is often the case with live-service games. While the game itself is generally a lot of fun, some of the biggest issues with Helldivers 2 lie in how much information is lost to players if they aren’t consulting outside sources. Want to know about the lore? Good luck, you’re going to have to look up the wiki. Want to know about what enemies you’re facing and their traits? Well,there’s no codex, so… check Reddit, I guess. Want to know which planet it makes the most strategic sense to attack first?There’s no centralised communityto strategise with, and you need to take supply lines into account,which aren’t represented in the game itself.
That means that if you’re a casual player who isn’t constantly trawling the Helldivers 2 subreddit andDiscordserver, a lot of this information is completely unknown to you. That’s a huge problem. Thelatest call for in-game tutorialsrelating to the game’s mechanics has come in response to a new revelation: planets with SEAF bases under Super Earth’s control actually grant a percentage bonus towards liberating all planets. When they get overrun by enemies, that bonus is lost permanently, since the base gets destroyed. This happened on Vernen Wells, where players had no idea that the bonus would be lost, if they knew there was a bonus at all.
This informationwastechnically given to players in an in-game dispatch, which I’m sure everybody is reading, right? One dispatch says that the Terminids are attacking Angel’s Venture, and if they succeed, the Training Facility on that planet would be destroyed and this would “significantly decrease the capability of the SEAF to aid in galactic defence”. The dispatch ends with a recommendation that Helldivers prioritise the defence of Angel’s Venture.
This dispatch is a clear stopgap measure from the developers, a way to tell players that theyshouldcare about this. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that considering Helldivers 2’s meta form of storytelling, it can be hard to tell if this bonus is an abstract bonus that’s just a part of the story, or if it’s a numbers-based bonus that materially impacts gameplay. It turns out it’s the latter, but it’s not ridiculous to think that players overlooked this information because they thought it wasn’t important. This dispatch helps mitigate that to some extent by offering concrete instructions to players, but it’s not enough.
Another issue is that if you miss the dispatch because you haven’t played for a while, you’re not going to have a clue what’s going on. You might not know what an SEAF base even is if you missed those Major Orders and don’t keep up with the lore when you’re not actively playing. There’s no in-game log of this information, and there are no indicators in the UI to show which planets have bases on them or what bonuses they’re offering.
While in-game text notifications help to draw attention to those planets, tweaks to the UI could be made to highlight priority planets. Just off the top of my head, I would appreciate it if planets at high risk of being overrun were highlighted on the Galactic Map when viewing it from a macro scale, perhaps with sectors being highlighted or just an exclamation mark over those planets. Defence campaigns are often taking place in sectors apart from planets implicated in Major Orders as well, and tend to get overlooked because there’s no reason to click around through other sectors.
For that matter, I often forget which planets are in which sectors and have to take time searching for them in the map. Surely there’s a way to make this clearer.
I’m aware that Arrowhead has a lot on its plate – with players upset about haphazard weapon nerfing, the PSN controversy still not entirely fixed, and the quality of Warbonds being called into question, it’ll be hard for the studio to resolve all its issues in a short timeframe. But this feels like something thatneedsto be fixed, especially if the studio wants to bring new players into the fold. I’d go so far as to say I wish this was something that had been implemented from launch, but there’s no point complaining about that now. The best time to have these features would have been months ago, but the second-best time is now.
Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 is the sequel to the third-person shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios. This time out, the Helldivers are deep in the Galactic War, and it’s up to you to bring Managed Democracy to the masses.
