Summary
As aHelldivers 2player that lives in Asia, I get a bit of a bad deal. Assuming that the general player population is the same acrossPlayStationandPC,SteamDBindicates that the time when I finish work and log on to start playing coincides almost exactly with the time when player count is at its lowest. They usually peak at 8pm UTC with a second peak at 3am UTC, which is about 8pm in the UK and the west coast of the United States – that’s 4am and 11am for me, when I am either sleeping or working.
There’s no way of knowing for sure if the trends SteamDB shows are actually representative of both PC and PS5 players since those figures aren’t publicised, butwe do know that more people have bought Helldivers 2 on PC than on PS5in the US, and that trend may hold globally as well.
I Walk A Lonely, Aid-Less Road
As a result, matchmakingsucks. It’s not that I’m getting paired with people either severely higher or lower in level than me – I don’t care about that, andit’s in the spirit of the game to carry and be carried– but that I rarely get paired with anybody at all. I usually don’t play with friends because coordinating around work schedules and social lives is a pain, and I’m perfectly happy to hop in a game with randoms just to whack out an operation, but the problem is that there just isn’t anybody to play with.
If I start a game and wait for strangers to join, I could be waiting for up to twenty minutes without a full party forming. I’ll get a maximum of two other players to join me, if I’m lucky, and that’s on hard difficulty – I imagine it’s even more difficult to find players playing on higher difficulties. In order to not keep party members waiting for an elusive third or fourth member that may never materialise at all, I often end up just starting the operation and tossing an SOS beacon out in hopes that help will eventually come.
After the first few weeks of playing, I haven’t had a single SOS beacon answered. The number of players online when I am is often a third or a quarter of the peak, which means systems meant to aid matchmaking just don’t work as well. I’m fine settling for fewer players in a party, even if it’s not ideal, but I often make it through by the skin of my teeth because there’s much less room for error.
The Recent Patch Made Solo Runs More Punishing
Arrowhead has now made this more painful in a recent update. The 01.000.300 updateincreases patrol spawning in missions where there are less than four players, with the biggest change applying to solo players at higher difficulties. Apparently, Arrowhead had accidentally made it too easy before, with a bug leaving solo players fighting 1/6th the number of patrols instead of the correct 1/4th. This patch has fixed that to keep solo players fighting for their lives instead of resting on their laurels.
I understand the rationale behind the decision, but in practice, it doesn’t work very well. Having more players doesn’t just increase firepower, it increases your strategic advantage. There are obviously more ways to deal with enemies, camps and patrols when there’s more players. With fewer players, you end up leaning more on stealth, changing the entire feel and pace of the game.
I don’t want to play with fewer players – I like the way the game feels with a full squad – but I often don’t have a choice. The patch makes sense for people who play solo on purpose because they enjoy the difficulty, but for people outside of the two continents with the highest concentration of players, itsuuucks. I’ll probably have to lower my difficulty while playing on weekdays, and I hate that I have to do that. I think the patch is the right decision when it comes to the experience of the majority of players, but it doesn’t feel great to be part of the overlooked minority.
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.
