Helldivers 2 Has Lost 90% of Players... What Next? 

The main reason is how repetitive the recent major orders have been. We manage to take territory from the bugs, but then we have to go back to the bots to take back the territory they've taken, then we have to go back to the terminids because they have taken back all of the planets that we managed to take previously, that sums up all of the recent major orders. We need variety in the major orders, like the meridia black hole one. We could have a simillar mission that we had on meridia but in cyberstan instead. I just hope that the illuminate come to the game soon to bring more variety to the major orders and bring back the hype this game used to have

I have about 500 hours in the game, give or take. The problem is they had a very simple formula on release and they did not follow it. Everyone loved the game, tons of players, maps and everything was super new. All they had to do was create content, fix some issues, and expand the story. They instead got a terrible balance lead that basically punched you in the face for having fun. The breaker and shield were a necessary nerf and all they had to do was buff weapons to get people to use other things. They instead… continued to nerf everything, Didnt release any new biomes or content, and somehow managed to break more of the game. In the entire first month of the game I crashed one time. 5 months later I crash about 3-4 times a day counting the forced closing I had to do being stuck in the loading screen. Reinforcements sometimes don’t work ever, missions will stop working so we can’t complete them, and we only just got the spear fix despite it being done for 2 months and it took them 2 attempts to fix because they broke it the first time. It was a very simple formula that any other game dev team would have drooled over. Servers full, good will from a community that was patient with you, people giving you idea after idea for content they would like to see. And none of it got done.

Speaking as someone who loves this game, almost 125 hours, I need to say the reptative with no significant progress has been dissapointing. I remember when we fist defeated the bots! That was amazing! Our efforts changed the map. Destroying Meridia was amazing! But now... it's a war of attrition. We shall see how things go when the devs return from their state-sponsored vacations. I want Illuminates! I want new mechs! I want new biomes!

Allow us to purchase attachments that improve weapons.... vehicles for traversing the planets.... and fix the bugs, really awesome game none the less. Missions would be welcome as well

the main reason: the game is only half-baked and players are tired of waiting

Add some raids. Have a terminid hive system you go down in to and do various little tasks. Fight a massive terminid boss at the end! Get unique weapons or armour as a reward.

I bet the team is still grateful this game gotten this big the way it did, now they should have less pressure on their shoulders and I’ll try to stick with them :)

260 hours, Level 129 here. My ONLY gripe with the game is sheer lack of Endgame content. Sure other things need work, but there's no point in waiting for bug fixes if there is straight up no content.

They should honestly be a community suggestion board where we can all put ideas and throw things at the wall and the devs can see what sticks Because there's so many great communities suggestions that sound awesome but at the same time you don't want to make it seem like we know it all as this is still arrowhead's vision but I think there are very great suggestions coming from the community on things to add and they just need the developers to put things in I've been taking a break as of recent myself and level 115 Just give the time some game to grow and give Arrowhead some time to cook I have a feeling come the winter it will be much better

The issue with diverse objective types is that there is only a limited number of things that can reasonably be done with the game’s premise. You can’t call in support or ammo while underground, maybe in a building if it breaks through the celling. Now, it the bunker was a sub objective or main objective where you could call in supplies at certain points, ie. The entrance, sniper holes, launch bays, etc. that would make the game interesting, but only if the bunkers were dynamically generated as otherwise certain patterns would become standard and thus boring. A ship would just be like the bunker, or, if the ship moved, could be like a massive boss fight where getting up to it, or taking down a massive drop ship from the ground could be interesting. There are only so many things that can be made. People get used to environments, especially games they play a lot. And what people are used to gets boring. It is the nature of human psychology. In my opinion, from a psychological view, the best approach for the game to take is to lean heavily into emergent gameplay. Complex series of systems combine to create unforeseen events. Like maybe a dynamic labyrinth map, where the walls move and acts as a big kill cage made by the automatons. Or caves and cliff faces with wall and ceiling climbing bugs that can leap down on you after screeching. Maybe the airships get varieties, and as you mow down one type a different type shows up, or different collections of types as patrols or reinforcements. Air ship reinforcements. The issue is it takes a lot of time to make the systems, especially the ones that are random and interact with one another. I certainly think different bug breach or not drop processes could do well. I mean like ground assault vehicles for the bots instead of airships. Or massive breaches given specific circumstances. Maybe breaches could just keep pushing swarms and swarms until you leave the area? Maybe boss objectives where the boss can do a whole lot? Like a whole map where you hide from a huge automaton that seeks out you anywhere on the map. Or a big bug that spews bugs like a queen. A flying bastion where you need to take it out with prepositioned artillery pieces from a huge gun firing mini nukes. Would any of these work? I don’t know. That’s the issue. They are probably being conservative to not mess up the game, and in doing so hurting the game by not being liberal enough. There is a theme, and a feel, and those two thinks make or kill a game. Just my two cents.

Its too repetitive. No story . No end game. Basic cosmetics. All my friends have forgotten anout Hd2 i cant blame them.

After initial all day gaming at launch I'm now treating it like I did the first game. Boot it up maybe once a day, get a 3 mission campaign done, do the daily objective and then play/do something else.

Patrols/spawns are still broken as of playing last Thursday, feels horrible to have to use every primary and secondary mag, grenade, all my eagles, just to clear out a single medium or large bug nest because of broken spawns that just keep adding more and more patrols. Shriekers are annoying as well, but they don't instantly kill you like before, so I'm fine with their patrols for the most part. Bots aren't nearly as bad (mainly because their numbers in bot drops/patrols are smaller), but they still have times where you get an unending swarm of them. They also either nerfed impact grenades or buff spewers, the explosion damage reduction on strikers made impacts, and the auto-cannon feel horrible. Can first twice at a hulks head and drop it. There is a chance I need 3 auto-cannon shots at the face plate of the strider. Just the game doesn't feel good to play anymore and hasn't for a while now. I'll keep trying after each patch, but they had a good difficulty balance, and they should have looked at either adding more difficulties or adding optional modifiers we could toggle.

I'm curious on the actual log in numbers. How many just in do a quick mission or 2 and finish their daily and then log out.

When the hell did it become a thing in gaming that for a game to not "fail" it has to have crazy high player counts months after release.

Pre-launch expectation was 10K concurrent players. Compared to that not bad. Thing with the game is that after maybe 40 hours you have experienced pretty much everything you can.

I haven’t been playing religiously as I was at launch but I’m still playing with my mates once a week at least, in my mind this is a game I’ll keep coming back to because it is just casual fun.

I feel like HellDivers 2 is to worried with content to fight with and not content that they teased many times but we haven't seen anything of it yet, except for shriekers, but they teased hive lords so many times and all we still see is the exoskeletons on maps, it like they are giving us content, but its not content that keep us hooked, its like fish, you want more fish you need a good bait. And i still wish they would bring vehicles, but instead they gave us two chances to get anti tank mines

My game would constantly keep crashing. I’d make sure all my drivers were updated and everything but nothing would help it so despite how much i like the game i am simply unable to play it.

Honestly there should be a mission type where you can explore bug caves fighting bugs and destroying like the queen or something and or exploring mech super bases or even their ships it would be so cool. We should also Have city biomes you have all these cities on these planets but we never see them it’s always the same maps and it gets so bland. The repetition is crazy we need vehicles as well to traverse and some actual bug and bot busting weapons that feel so good and you get the really cool vibe of feeling how it is to destroy everything around you. Like music would play in my head as I bust some bug buts lol

A deep hive mission would be cool, I'm picturing the 4 helldivers all moving forward in a firing line blasting on waves of bugs coming at them trying to stop them. But in practice, it'd probably be really annoying, filled with awkward friendly fire incidents, glitchy hitboxes absolutely ruining the experience, bugs pathing being weird, clipping through the floor.... Also, how would you use stratagems? how would you call in reinforcements? You'd need to have one helldiver waiting outside to call in reinforcements incase anyone dies. That ultimately sounds kinda tedious. Especially for the dude on respawn duty. What if everyone dies while in the tunnel? They auto reinforce ontop of the tunnel, on the actual level above ground? If it doesn't go too deep underground, and isnt like a catacombs experience but just a short intrepid trek, like a bear cave, with a couple of short tunnels leading to a large open cavern with a boss or something, then it would be great actually and sidestep quite a few of these issues.

Great thoughts, I do see that the Galactic Map relies on player count and at a certain point it would become unplayable as the values for liberation and decay are largely set in stone, and AH would need to accept that the daily liberation cap would have to be lifted and the aforementioned values tweaked to change in accordance with player count to avoid it becoming too hard to liberate and especially defend. I actually see a lot of people say the game is too hard, especially with Bots XD But it is manageable with practise and teamwork so some higher difficulties will be appreciated. And yes the longer people get to talk ideas the bigger they will become and the more they will insist, this is a live service game and such a big smash hit on release so they absolutely should throw their all in and add big ideas, people just have to remember that this is a very small team of 100 or so people that brought us smaller titles like Magika, so it will take time. A classic campaign like the first game that rewards you with limited-use bonuses to take into the main Galactic War would be nice, plus some upgrades that require a new non-premium resource that is added to the main game will give something new to players and also encourage them to return to the main fight. Also mission on ships and in bunkers would be great! You could even chain those with a ground mission into a three-part Super Mission that plays concurrently when planets becomes available to liberate, with bigger risks and rewards, it would work just like Deep Rock Galactic's Deep Dives and give us the kinds of missions that Star Wars Battlefront players could only dream of! At least I don't think we ever got a mission like that Ultimately it's down to what AH chooses to do that keeps people coming back or not, it's not fair to expect half a million players again but bigger additions like that will help. Only time will tell!

I think after their summer break, they'll be back on track with big content. It did only release this year. I think a lot of people are used to constant updates and big ones at that, every month. Although, they probably would have a lot more stuff out and new things/ planets to play if they didn't have to do that huge fix to the nerfs that happened. We'll have too see what they bring.

Don’t forget the major single player game releases like Elden Ring DLC and Hades 2, so people might come back after they’ve experienced new games if given a chance

Starship troopers extermination has that exact mission. Going underground into the hive and making the heck out of it. Would be cool to see something like that in Helldivers

They need to start implementing something to do once you've unlocked all stratagems and ships modules, maybe use those currencies for temporary (one mission or one operation) powerful boosters and stratagems maybe ? But difficulty would need to be increased (or have harder difficulty levels) for those to not throw the balance out of wack. The major orders need to have more of an impact on the story, more than ''deliver x number of bug planets'' this week then shift to ''deliver x number of bots planets'' the next. And yeah, too many planets are unpleasant to play on. Especially those with low visibility

Bugs, Crashes, and everyone is just maxed out. No other way to spend resources on. Suggestions? Fix the bugs and crashes Be able to donate resources to a war effort through community voted assets that will be available to everyone. But can't wait for the illuminate too.

My playtime went down too. Nobody on my friends list is on anymore. The group I routinely dive with have drastically cut down their gametime. The one friend i do play with that is a firm regular, I have to convince the rest of my friends to "chaperone" us to squad up thanks to the broken social menu. We inadvertently "remove friend"-ed each other trying to frantically rejoin our squad after various crashes. Arrowhead seems to refuse to fix their social menu, and I just don't want to dive into higher difficulty missions with randos. We even put in IT tickets to AH directly, and they just cannot fix it.

After i got all the strategems and ship modules, i backed off down to difficulty 4-5 to just enjoy playing more casually. I still log in most nights and play the planets for the MO, but im not grinding away like i was as the start. The other problem is theres no way in game to plan strategy across the whole player base. You have to use discord but not everyone is there. As an example with the current MO, bugs are launching attacks on the MO planets from Gacrux. If the player base takes Gacrux then those other MO planets are now completely safe for the duration of the MO. But theres no way to organise the players to take a planet thats not specified in the MO.

It's also be cool if each stratagem and weapon had a few upgrade choices like in Deep Rock Galactic, just so you always feel like your progressing and have more options in things you take in

Kinda never got over the whole “170 countries still banned from the game” thing. To my knowledge it’s still like that

TLDR: 1. Poor development prioritization. 2. Community managers that hate their community. 3. PSN lockout debacle. 4. endgame grind? 1. Devs focused on balance patching (nerfing) a PvE game for months, while adding aggravating stealth changes, all while finding new things to break in the process, instead of fixing major foundational issues and adding new FUN content. How many times have you heard, not to talk about something being good because the fun police would nerf it? Even when they did create something new, it's usually broken on arrival and/or breaks something else. Examples? Mech was amazing, but one shot yourself if you fired a rocket while turning. They fixed the bug, but messed up the aiming and nerfed its usefulness to oblivion by comparison. Airburst launcher blew up in your face every time you would use it. Some new ship upgrades are still broken to this day, ect. How long was it for them to fix the damn scopes on weapons? Or the host DOT effects? Or the PS5 host damage bug? Meanwhile, players are going through this crazy development resource hell, while the things they like to use get nerfed into the dirt CONSTANTLY, and they add, I kid you not, stealth changes like enemies moving faster when you're not looking at them. It's downright annoying. To their credit, recent changes have been a lot better to restore the health of balance, but it's too little too late. We're back in the state of the "brainless" railgun meta but instead it's the flamethrower. Which leads me to my next point... 2. Even if you survived all of the crap going on in part 1, you probably saw all the drama with the terrible things the Devs said about their own player base. This "childish" behavior essentially tore at the community... When the game first came out it was, leave no helldiver behind! Suddenly this weird, "get good" culture came out of the woodwork. The people that want a video game to be hard just to stroke their pathetic egos instead of the game being fun for all, were suddenly validated as the community managers lashed out repeatedly at their own player base for raising valid concerns. At this point, a lot of people hate the direction The game is going. The fun they had was being sucked away with "balance" changes. The terrible community managers actively don't like you, and the community itself is full of people that suck their farts for a living to inflate their ego while calling you bad at the game... If you've managed to survive thus far: 3 The PSN lockout debacle. Not much to say here that hasn't already been said. Truth be told, the Steam numbers around this time plateaued. It simply was/is another reason for people to never click that desktop icon again. 4. So now you're playing Deep Rock Galactic or Monster Hunter, or Destiny 2 or whatever. You have a reason to sink thousands of hours into the game. You watch videos like this casually from the sideline, hoping that one day Helldivers 2 would be as good as it was, build 0, when the only thing you had to worry about was logging in for 15 minutes... You get a cynical yet wise chuckle from seeing trailers for the next warbond, then seeing that most things in them are broken a few days later. Hell, maybe the trailer pulls you back in and you try the game, only to realize that it's still an arcady mess compared to the games you have reason to sink thousands of hours into. The tools available to the player seem janky/broken and insufficient at endgame difficulty compared to those other games, and there really isn't an incentive to play because most of your friends didn't survive until this point... You are now in the 90%... It's not your fault. I miss a lot of you, fellow Helldivers.

I love helldivers, there is just no reason for me to play...

I took a couple month break because I got a puppy, I will say the continued abysmal state of most primary weapons is sad because to have fun you are locked with a few select guns if you want to enjoy difficulty above 3 or 4 fortunately side arms have been decent recently and the stratagem guns have a few more viable options now although I pretty much only run Quazar so I can snipe chargers without taking up backpack slots for ammo, but being locked with the breaker incin, regular breaker and such gets old

I still love this game. My biggest gripes with it are: 1. Sony fiasco was no bueno... 2. (*SIREN* FUN DETECTED) - The stupid balance decisions which force players into "meta" type builds. I like to try different stratagems, but some are just really really baaaaad. Main weapons tend to suck and I didn't see the point of even using main and secondary weapons. Why worry about "balance" anyway when there are game crashing bugs that should be prioritized. Nah, too many people are using this weapon and we need to adjust it... 3. Lack luster and pathetic warbonds. 4. Shitty interactions from Community Mangers and Dev team. You must remain professional. You MUST remain professional. They should fire any of the people that cannot handle that. 5. The biggest issue of all are the bugs and crashes. My friend and I get disconnected or crash literally half of the games we play. Also, there's a bunch of bugs around ship module upgrades and its a crap shoot if they are working or not. I know they are a small team... I know they weren't expecting the success... This excuse cannot be used forever... They got some massive sales and they need to use newly acquired money to quickly resolve these problems.

There is quite literally no end-game. You can play just for the sake of playing, which is fine for some, but not for most. Very quickly you stop getting stronger, the cosmetics are meh, every new warbond has this aura of "is it actually worth it? Or is it broken and/or nerfed to the point where it's unusable". Not to say anything about constant struggles with optimisation and metric hellton of crashes. It's just much easier to grab a bunch of my buddies and play a game that works and/or has any sense of progression.

1. Sony's dick move about PSN requirement 2. Sony's 2nd dick move of de-listing the game from steam in all the countries that are not allowed to have PSN accounts - AFTER walking back the PSN requierement. A huge chunk of that 90% drop is in those 177 countries. Part of me feels this was Sony's plan all along because they didn't think Helldivers 2 would be so well received on launch. I'm guessing they want to sacrifice HD2 in order to hype up their next release, which is the new Starship Troopers game.

I lost interest after the handling of the original balance issues with the railgun nerfing and the handling of armoured enemies the devs response was a massive red flag. The whole PSN account mess made me fully stop playing and I just haven't felt the urge to play since.

Does anyone even know the sum of the HD2 moderator DEI actually putting in the discord At the same time, they’re trying to advocate to put it in the game as well which right now that’s internal conflict between gamers and moderators at fuel to the fire the two community manager, also in it

Another flavor-of-the-month game for 2024. Battlebit, Palworld, Helldivers, Content Warning, etc

Maybe because they decided to take a summer break during the most crucial moment for their game?? Leaks for the illuminate and vehicles have been around for like 3 months now. They could of at-least release that update before the insane work break.

I can agree with the opinion that helldivers needs some variety in its set of available missions and biomes. If they were to add a handful of mission types per enemy faction, as well as adjusted how missions get bundles up in operations, it would add some much needed variety into the game. I don't agree that they should now focus attention into adding some wildly different level generation like cave systems. It would eat up so much development time, we would've had to wait months for anything new to come out. However adding the new jungle biome was some much needed breath of fresh air. Helldivers in its genre of horde shooters is still the most popular game among titles like vermintide, darktide, DRG. It is only beaten by left 4 dead which has been kept alive by a very active modding scene.

I have all my ship modules maxed out and I'm not playing for the warbonds perse... I play to experience the game and it's real time progressing storry that gets presented to us in the form of major orders... To influence what will happen in the game as a player, I think that's a cool concept. I'm at level 77 right now and I have great fun just playing the game with my friends Most of the time ( now that I need no more super samples and you can get them on 6) I just chill out on difficulty 5 or 6 or help people out on dif. 4... I'm not good enough to play 8 or 9 in any way that is fun to me so I just don't do that

From my very limited sample (a couple other coworkers also played Helldivers before I got the game), they both left the game because other games came out. They don't hate the game, but they have other desires and games to play with their friends.

Nerfs + no progression + shitty discord mods made me not want to play anymore. Waiting for the next games.

I can not finish any 40m mission due to overheat. None of the other games I play has this problem

I'm not worried. Content is fairly repetitive at the moment but they slowed it down to work on balance more. Plus Elden Ring DLC just came out, which I would argue is the bulk of the missing players, myself included. I'll come back to this game when it's convenient to do so.

I dont play 8 and 9, but in my opinion releasing one more difficulty every few months, until they reach 15 would bring some players back, but difficulty should bring something new, not only enemy spam and heavy spam. Something like harder to achive objectives, or maybe even raids, like going into a terminid nest and having a terminid overlord as the boss, but something to mantain good players engaged, and have casual players looking to get good enough to play those harder missions.

Big punch in a gut for me was when we defeated bots for like 1 day. Joel f-ed up imo with this one. When you’re a GM you think about combining your story with fun for players. Not pushing your narrative into their throats

I mean considering over 100 countries can't play anymore that's kinda expected. That combined with all the nurfing issues as well as people just being busy with summer activities all makes perfect sense. I mean I myself only manage to get on and play a few times a month

I still really enjoy the gameplay, but I've run out of progression. Maps and missions feel mostly the same. Not enough updates. Artowhead around have hired more people to speed up the addition of new content. We still haven't received the steam review cape and that should have been easy to quickly add to the game

Yeah I took a break because I heard they were adding the illumnit (or whatever it’s called)…… I’m still waiting

I thought of that bunker idea, or some sort of interior map like a ship. I thought i might be hard for them to let you call in stratagems from inside somewhere. But, they could make areas with an open ceiling that serve as checkpoints or designated zones where you can call in stratagems (hull breach, cave opening)

I think they could adjust how we liberate planets, make it go a lot faster like 3k a planet captures it at the speed of 28k, this way, we wont all be spending so much time at the same planet which would lead to other planets being needed to defend be happening, just to up the intensity of the war, like atm it takes the majority of the players 3 days to liberate just 1 planet

I think it be the momentary lack of content, but also the Elden Ring and Destiny 2 DLC’s just released, as well as the First Descendant. Once those wear down, and HD2 gets a content drop, we’ll see that player count return

I think a problem is that the dev team lacks the technical skills to implement all those cool ideas, seeing as how buggy every patch is.

Honestly, a filter for people that wants to play in squands would be a welcomed thing for this game. Really couldn't play this game solo and either find people to play which made me stops when it was peaking

We should take the bugs to the next level ala Starship troopers. We should have to go INTO a bughole and extract a brain bug or blow it up. It could be a 3-D map with over lapping tunnels and the like. The issue with this kind of mission is that there would be no airstrikes or orbitals. We can only bring what we can take with us. Meaning perhaps 2 people are carrying supply packs and going with energy weapons. Another mission for automatons would be inflitrating a humongous automated factory and need to steal data or information. Again this would also mean no airstrikes or orbitals.

well they can add a new game mode like a defense tower part where have more than 4 players that will fight to defend and any deaths will take 2 mins to respawn or a medic to come revive you.

-Need new mission types: example flip the defense mission, now you are breaking into a fortified position overcoming waves and waves of enemies as you push in to secure check points. (kinda like what you had mentioned) -Needs new and more varied mission modifiers: Enemies have 25% more health, damage, etc. AA has 80% chance of shooting down Eagle (preventing those stratagems) and 25% shooting down support weapon call in... FUBAR: stealth isn't an option - call-ins and breaches are constant (this is a special event modifier, you don't know you have it until you've hit the ground and command informs you). -Need something to use gathered resources on: Samples and currency can be used to buy 1 time use buffs for a map, some for self, others for team. Like an extra stratagem slot, increase number of magazines, drop in already equipped with your support weapon or they drop along with u. Etc. -Need some other system to spend gathered resources on in addition to the 1 time buffs mentioned earlier. - Operational costs? - Upgrading armors? some gacha system, IDK, kinda at a lost for this one, I just think there needs to be something else in place to help manage our currency/samples. -Higher Difficulty.

Whether they like it or not, they need to get back to the cadence of content that was initially planned. That is if they want to keep the players engaged. How they do it is up to them. It would be fine if a Major Order lasted 1 week each and every 2nd week something interesting happened with the story. A full month of Major Orders like "kill 2 Billion Bugs" or "capture planet X, Y and Z" just isn't cutting it imo. Logged back in after 1 month and I didn't really feel like I missed anything significant story or content-wise. That's my biggest issue with the game. Right now they can't deliver what was promised and expected by the players.

I think some "bosses" would help deal with the stagnant feel of the game along with the bug lairs and bot bunkers. Giant mobile bot fortresses and mega mechs. Big tunneling horrors and brood mothers. Stuff that is going to take an actual team effort to bring down. Like the bile titans on difficulty 6, give me an enemy worth my time that are the focus of the mission!

I think 1 problem about underground or spaceship battle is because it's about open world games with cool orbitals or eagle strikes. But honestly, i think it would still be a cool idea. Or what about planets like the moon where the sound is muted and barren, or a giant bug meteor full of bug eggs that need to be nuked in space. Or we land outside of a giant bot ship and need to blow up its main armaments so our ships can get close to blow it up. Sorry, im going off the deep end ranting 😂 But yes, i agree, we have enough weapons, i just need a reason to use them. Oh, and random weapon and stratagem mode, please.

Once you finished upgrading the ships, getting the warbond you want, there's nothing left. Waiting for the next update to get into the game though, which might take awhile as the company is taking a summer vacation.

I was also enjoying all the random suprises they were putting in the game but the seamed to have stopped. For example the strider, i really hope they have a big comback with this game cause its awesome

I would kill for a multi stage operation as a variation of the usual 3 mission per op. Say like SEAF is doing some sort of planetary campaign and request the helldivers support for it. Stage one could be like spear heading into hostile territory clearing the way for SEAF forces to establish an FOB of some sorts. Stage 2 could be a variety of missions either being the vanguard for SEAF forces for an assault or sabotage missions etc. stage 3 could be like a final boss fight of some big ass bot/bug or attacking a big fuck off base full of em. Bonus points if SEAF artillery has like unlimited use in this stage. Visual presentation the operational progress is also a big bonus. Once that’s done maybe make it so that each “Planetary Campaign” has an effect to overall liberation(high lib rate or lower lib decay) for a reward for doing the operation. Had this idea buzzing in my head bc I want to see more SEAF representation instead of just here say in update logs. Anyways, that’s my schizo mode rambling 😂

The problem is people in gaming these days have become accustomed to seasons with big releases, so slow content releases isn’t enough to draw people back with sudden game-changing releases. Hopefully the Illuminate will bring back some people.

I’ve been maxed out with everything for over a week but I still play just the same as I did before, because the game is just plain fun to play and help other players grind it out. Learn new stratagem strategies and builds, what works well, what doesn’t. When you drop with a group of guys right beside a stalker nest and get devoured from the rip is amazing. Nearly every match has something different to offer and has a strong player base. Just weeding out the non dedicated I believe.

After all of the progression is finished and filled out and all the resource caps are reached, the only thing left is the Galactic Campaign. Playerbase normally shrinks. That's the way of things. But if Arrowhead can engineer a way for a smaller number of Helldivers to more meaningfully and reliably swing events on the front, more people will stay. Recall the hype and eager roleplay when we beat the Automatons the first time, before the SONY Debacle. Consider Foxhole. What's going to better develop a devoted core of consistent players, the idea that they're pulling more and more weight, or the feeling that they're just spitting into the wind? There's a considerable level of pride from Foxhole clans when they're able to make a significant, palpable contribution to their battlefront, such as the taking of a settlement or the severing of an opposing supply line. Give that to HD2. If Arrowhead wants long-term investment, I would suggest a resource sink able to more significantly impact the overarching campaign, or a way for the upcoming Platoons to magnify their players' capacity to move the needle regarding the war effort. If a group of dedicated players can put down roots with a base of operations on any particular world and considerably contribute to Defenses or operations on neighboring worlds, that's a point of pride they can look back on when someone like Super Earth Galactic War Data Archive references that stage of the campaign.

smaller playerbase means they have to either make the game easier or harder bc more people are gonna play solo. And also we lose the galactic war. Same thing that happened with HD1

yes quest diversity would be cool, bunkers caves, Train escort, Seaf bases defense, urban areas, Seaf soldiers areas

Are you able to get any news on steam deck update for optimization to run better? And any frame generation update?

I still love to hop on and play every once and awhile. There's no other game I can just hop on and play and be guaranteed a good time. They just need to add deeper progression, with things to grind for. They'll get there

the biggest issue for me is the constant weapon nerfs... Even though there was a recent patch that buffed some weapons. That was still not enough, specially considering how heavily nerfed they were before... I don't like to feel weaker every time I long into the game

Deep Rock Glactic gets around the staleness of few Missions by having variation I the maps per mission, something they add to with each update. I think it took us until last week to get a new planet type, we desperately need more variety in the missions, maybe a boss culling mission or superbosses that are themselves a mission (do the bugs even have a boss?).

They need new game modes. A round based horde mode for one would be cool and maybe an 8 player operation variant or something. Plus buffs to the weapons and not having guns nerfed wouldn’t hurt.

Honestly, the only reason I play as someone who has unlocked basically everything is to roleplay and continue fighting for Super Earth and Democracy. It's VERY motivating lol

One of the few times I think channels are blowing the problem out of proportion. Yes the game has lost a lot of players but keep in mind they also saw success on an unprecedented scale. It makes sense that they'd lose more players than the average live service game. Expecting the game to hold even close to the numbers it had on release is simply unrealistic. The game has basically entered its stabilized state where it now has the core playerbase. We're gonna be seeing big increases during big updates and content drops and then it'll stabilize again, maybe drop a bit if no MO is active etc. It rly is business as usual for the kind of game HD2 is. Sure the curve in which it declined might've been better if not for the controversies but it would've still declined because its just what happens with live service games.

Hello Games taught us with No Man’s Sky that if the devs are passionate and not greedy you can bring a game back from the brink

They literally just need to add a raid mode with like extra players doing a huge object or each squad doing one obj for a frontal assault

More than anything else that causes friends who have stopped playing the game is not that it's repetitive, it's the technical issues and decisions made by the Devs. To elaborate, most of the people I play with only have a fixed amount of time to play any game out there. That means that you want your 2 to 3hours available to mean something. Imagine then if you will, playing 30 mins or so and the game glitching out on you, causing you to not be able to complete a mission. Or worse, after completing 2 40min missions only to crash out on the start of the third making all that hard work mean nothing towards the planetary contribution. Yes we had fun while doing the mission but the frustration you feel wipes out that fun and if that happens often enough, which it does, makes players less and less willing to invest in playing the game. Now add on top of that, the "balancing" decisions where it is now the running joke that if anything is fun in the game needs to be "balanced" till it's not. Which is another issue here. Challenging and difficulty levels are at the moment tied to spawn rates and the type of spawns being used on a map instead of as you mentioned the type of missions available. It's not fun to have multiple patrols, often spawning out of thin air, sometimes right in front of you, on a map "just because" breaks immersion and takes you out of the moment. This and the weapon nerfs in combination makes playing the game "not fun". And if it's not fun, people will play less Same for the Warbonds. Knowing everything in that Warbond will come pre-nerferd or will be nerfed, removes any excitement for any premium product and makes it more and more less likely for people to want to buy them.

I think the current orders are just to keep us busy while they work on the next big thing, and it simply takes longer than they expected.

Game had a massive presence on social media for awhile, was a hot topic, and had a lower sale price than AAA games so the initial playerbase numbers were WAY more than they ever anticipated. Customer advertising through socials and streamers blew a game that was initially a quiet sequel to a twin stick shooter up into the biggest game of the year at the time. Realistically casual player burnout and people who move from big hype to big hype probably ate a majority of it, sort of like seeing steam achievements for other games and less that X% of players making it to bosses at a certain point in decreasing as it goes on or situations like Palworld. The playerbase will never reach what it once was since it's "old news" now and the only people still kicking are the people that were hooked. So all of the big "GAME IS DEAD! 90% OF THE PLAYERS ARE GONE!" feels like a huge overreaction since a good chunk of those people were never going to stay to begin with even if everything went perfectly. Progression and no real endgame definitely plays a part in it too but there's people that are just fans of the core gameplay loop that'll always be there. After all there are still Helldivers 1 players despite not having an update in 4 years and a sequel in front of them. Player count will fluctuate up and down over time and stabilize when they get on an update schedule then drop when they finally shutter it to work on HD3. Overall they aren't faultless in the player decline but it was never meant to be as big as it was at the start so who knows what the numbers would have been and would be now if it released the way they expected it to.

This game has so many game breaking bugs Some of the many: 1- friends list doesn't work 2- constant game crashes 3- game loading infinitely 4- Jungle maps drop fps to single digits 5- superior packing broken again 6- charger behemoths spawn rate is more than regular chargers 7- disconnecting issues either you or your squad gets disconnected And many more that I'm probably not remembering right now. Also, the fact that the devs are too busy nerfing the fun out of the game. And of course, we can't forget the lovely admins from the official discord.

Doesn’t help they went on a 3 week vacation and the game still isn’t fixed. Take that shit after you balanced the weapons and made things fun again, color pallets, drum mags etc. The big patch did nothing to help lvl 8 or above so it’s basically the same damn 3 weapons and stratagems.

I ditched the game a while ago. Their launch was abysmal in terms of being a service and they just kept making bad decisions. Bad balance decisions, PR flubs, the Sony debacle... They had so much goodwill and they took nearly every opportunity to squander it.

I'd love to see some more enemy modifiers. Maybe super earth gives the helldivers another bomb to plant to destroy the planets but instead it goes horribly wrong. Instead making enemies spawn more with less armor/health or vise versa. Or different enemy times spawn more or less. Some way to add significant variety to the more or less same missions without needing a ton of work.

Really just needed to keep the cadence up and have half the team pumping content and the other half doing fixes and balance along the way. Hearing that the coders were somehow involved in new content like armors and guns was really the worst news.

I left because they was nothing to work for, the amount of bugs after every update frustrated my friends and I, and the weapon balancing is dumb af. The first month was perfect I absolutely loved it, towards the end of March I couldn’t keep letting all the issues slide and had enough.

the reason why is because its been out for a long enough time for players like myself to unlock everything, whilst the gameplay loop is fun like anything it gets stale and with nothing to progress towards there is no incentive for me to play the game. Rather than smaller updates it'd be better if the devs just took months at a time then released a major update to bring back a larger percent of the playerbase, I ain't coming back cause of some minor rebalancing/bug fixing and mundane major orders.

It needs more variety, like little hits to the illuminates, like a few months ago there were strange sightings in the sky but as of lately there is nothing,just repetitiveness

I still love the game and still play, but not as often because I'm maxed out on everything except levels. I need something to do with my samples and would love more ship upgrades.

I got about over 300 hours and played since launch It’s def fun still just wish we had more to play for like unlocks and such. (Yes I work full time) lol

I'm the only one of my friend group who is still playing the game, but their reasons are because of the region locking issue. They said they wouldn't consider playing the game because of it and aren't coming back until it's removed. About a couple dozen people in total in friends and friends' friends.

It's largely the medals system and how content is released. As someone who put forty hours into the game in two weeks and hasn't played since, putting content in the battle pass or whatever they call it is 100% the reason new content just doesn't matter. There's a reason every major game that's lasted years makes content free, and cosmetics premium. The only time I've come back to the game was when the patriot mech launched. I logged in because I got to try it out for free during that first week. For every other bit of new content, it might as well not exist because its in the battlepass or whatever they call it. I don't play because I got bored without acess to new content, and I don't have acess to new content because I don't play enough to justify spending money on it. Every newgadget, gizmo, weapon, armor effect, and stratagem needs to be visble and available to players to draw them back in. The other issue is medals, and that system is flawed at the core. As someone who doesn't play, getting medals for major orders I didn't even participate in has made it so I feel zero pressure to play. The issue is that you have to give players without a ton of time to spend on the game the medals so that they can unlock new content in the progression tree because it has ever increasing medal requirements to keep the players that do play all the time from blasting through it. At the core, the concept of tying all the new content to progression or payment is going to kill the game as it completely eliminates the casual players of the game. Every gun, booster, and armor ability needs to be like the stratagems in the game, where I can buy what I want when I want. What should be sold is armor appearance, emotes, effects, voicelines, etc. TLDR: current content system doesn't give new content to casual players, which is going to kill the game.

I agree with a lot of the stuff said in this video but i feel its also important to note the crappy decisions Sony made and ultimately led to this. remember back a few months ago when Sony blocked +100 country's from playing the game and the community revolted. they changed it so that having a PlayStation account is no longer mandatory which is good. but the thing that bothers me is that even months later the 100+ country's are STILL BLOCKED and unable to play the game and nothing is being done. a good portion of that 90% player loss is definitely caused by this and it angers me that nothing is being done about it. overall Helldivers 2 is a great game and i love it but it really needs a lot of changes regarding both in the game and outside the game. 2 main things I'm hoping for is new content and reasons to play the game and also for Sony to bring back the unlisted country's.

I mean to be fair we will get new missions when they add illuminate, based on what we can observe with both the bots and the bugs having special missions with thier faction specific structures, like destroy factory strider missions, blow up command bunk missions, and stuff like that. Apart of me wonders the reason they are taking so long to release the god damn blue aliens is that they might be going all out on them, giving them a whole new complexities to their missions. Still think it’s a good game, I for one have been playing it a lot less than I usually do, but like you said there’s PLENTY of room for comeback

One of the suggestions I am going to make is.... ALLOWING US TO CHANGE LOADOUT BEFORE BEING REINFORCED. If we are technically coming from the ship, we should be allowed to change out our loadout. In COD you can change your loadout before you respawn, why isnt this an option in this game? And the glitches or bugs in the game is too much to deal with. Game crashing or the ship not showing up when we are supposed to supply the oil, or the drill not coming down during the NUKE missions. Its too many glitches in this game. I am grateful they made it so we can get purple samples on Extreme Missions, but I get excited to play this game and then I am over it after 2 or 3 missions because of all the glitches in the game

Need modular for the shuttle. Lame how they can't destroy your getaway shuttle

Still fighting on the same planets, not feeling any progress, just being stuck in one point. Where are big events like sudden invasion of Super Earth that would make everyone shout "everybody get online now!"? Where are new missions, plenty ideas given by community. Where are the new environments, moving the frontline to different side of the galaxy. First month of playing I remember running and slaying with stalwart was just pure fun. Now it's constant sweating and struggle to get through any operation with fully nerfed gun and buffed enemies. I was looking for fun in this game, and I though finally in the world of sweaty competitive games there is one that would bring the joy from childhood back. But nah... I feel like I'm stuck in a room with no windows, where I watch the same video on a loop while a dog bites on my leg constantly.