Helldivers 2 Addresses Push Back Against Recent Nerfs To Fan-Favorite Weapons

While Helldivers 2 players have found a suitable replacement for the Railgun after the one shot one kill weapon was nerfed in last week’s balance patch, there’s still some significant push back against the changes. Players argue that nerfs shouldn’t be a priority for a PvE game’s first update and that it needlessly increased the difficulty of higher-tier missions that spawned heavily armored Terminids and Automatons.

To be fair, nerfs were only made up part of the update which also introduced chaos-inducing planetary hazards like fire tornadoes and meteor showers.

In response, Head of Product Testing Patrik Lasota penned a dev blog explaining his thought process when it comes to nerfs. “I have since the game released seen many who say, ‘Don’t Nerf, only Buff’ and other similar ideas. However, as a designer I can tell you this is not a great idea, but I understand where the sentiment comes from,” he said.

“All too often in the games industry, the core fantasy and what makes a weapon feel good and fun, is ignored for the sake of Balance,” he continued. “I believe players are scared of Nerfs, because it will ruin the fantasy of a weapon, ruin their fun. It is extra important to us to tread carefully so that we don’t ruin fantasy and fun when we do nerfs. We hope you, our players, will tell us when we cross that line inadvertently.”

That being said, Lasota added that they always meant for support weapons and stratagems to be the main offensive tool in the game. This meant that they had to tuned down primary weapons that were performing a little too well on the battlefield. There’s also speculation that the changes were made to discourage mission farming, a practice which significantly affects the overall war outcome and has been another source of frustration for players.

Players, however, countered that stratagems aren’t as effective in higher difficulty missions compared to the easier ones because of their long cooldowns and the limit placed on how many you can bring to battle. They also challenged the developers to play the game at higher difficulties to show them how it’s done, if it is indeed doable.

On the upside, the changes have forced players to go outside their comfort zones and try out other weapons and strategies. The Flamethrower, for instance, has quickly become the weapon of choice for quickly taking down heavily armored bugs after mostly being ignored since the multiplayer shooter’s launch. While change is good as it keeps things fresh, here’s to hoping that it doesn’t cost the game its players.

As one Redditor put it, “You know what other game which focused on shooting things had guns that felt useless? Anthem. Think long and hard about this one.”