Helldivers 2 - Updates & Patch Notes (current 1.000.402)

[Mellenthin]

1 hour ago, yowzagabowza said:

These players all had a right to be pissed off. The PSN account thing was supposed to be implemented at the start, so why in the hell would it get sold in countries where that isn't possible? That point is enough to warrant the backlash. 

The reason given "(security") is bullshit and we all know it. Plus, now that Sony has reversed their decision, does security not matter anymore?

 

I am one who holds a grudge when it comes to where I spend my money and if I had a PC you can be certain I wouldn't be buying any Sony games there from here on out.

 

I'm sure most people affected have cooled down now when Sony has reverted their stance.

 

But, as you imply, Sony should probably thread lightly on Steam henceforth.🙂

 

1 hour ago, AgentSmiz said:

If they'd gone about it a different way and had it as optional BUT you got an exclusive armour/cape if you did link accounts, it would have gone over so much better.

 

Funnily enough, they're apparently getting just that - a cape depicting the review chart graphs of the last few days.😄

[Conor]

I don't play this game so I'm not really affected one way or another but whether any of us personally think this latest situation was a big deal or not, it is clear that the fanbase of this game were unhappy with the decision and reversing it was absolutely the right call. Sony is still betting big on this cross-platform live service model so it would really serve them well not to mess things up so soon.

[Ghost]

Patch notes for 1.000.302 

Spoiler

Overview

For this patch, we have made improvements and changes to the following areas:

• Some weapon and enemy balancing
• Crash fixes
• Social Menu issues
• DoT damage fix
• Misaligned scopes fix
• General fixes and improvements

Balancing

Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons

• R-9 Eruptor
  • Increased explosion damage by 40 and removed shrapnel from the explosion
  • This is to avoid cases in which players would randomly one-shot themselves or their teammates in a huge radius around the explosion

Enemies

• Increased Shrieker sight and hearing range slightly.
• Increased Gunship hearing range slightly.

Fixes

Gameplay

• We have fixed issues with the way Damage-over-time effects were being applied. This should fix issues where only the network session owner could apply them, and other cases where they would be applied inconsistently.
• Firing the Punisher Plasma while wearing a shield backpack no longer damages the Helldiver
• Fixed issues with some weapon scopes not being aligned in First-Person-View.
• The sound when stimming no longer plays while being interrupted
• Major orders with the “Kill task” now track score correctly. Previously it counted the entire squad’s kills once for each player, meaning it would multiply the score by the number of people on the mission; this is now amended.
• Helldivers can no longer land on tall rocks in the “Horde Defend Missions”
• Helldivers can no longer land on top of bug pillars in Deactivate Terminid Control System missions
• Fix for the reinforce stratagem not being present if a Helldiver leaves the session before readying up and then hot joining the active session

Crashes

• Fixed a crash that could occur when all players were dead on the “Deactivate Terminid Control System” mission
• Fixed a crash that could occur on game shutdown
• Fixed a crash that could occur when leaving the mission and rejoining
• Fixed a crash that could occur at the end of cutscenes
• Fixed a crash that could occur when diving into missions
• Fixed a tutorial crash that could occur on PC when ALT+Tabbing
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur when using beam weapons
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur for players on startup when using VPN
• Fixed a soft lock that could occur if the player would open the text chat while having the stratagem menu open
• Other general crash fixes

Social Menu fixes

• PC players adding friends through friend codes can no longer show up as “Unknown”
• Fixed overlapping footers inside menus
• Steam friends should now be visible in Social Menu, even though Friends List is not set to Public in Steam Privacy Settings
• Recent Players list will now include hot-joining players
• Players are now able to unblock players that were not in their friends list beforehand
• Fixed issue with empty friend-names in Social Menu
• Lobby privacy mode text updates immediately when changed
• Player names longer than 26 characters should now update properly in the Social Menu
• Fixed issue where non-host players could kick others indiscriminately including the host

Other

• Total purchased counter on the right side of the Robotics Workshop section no longer displays 7 / 8 despite all stratagems being purchased
• Resolved some edge cases related to Steam AppId related errors on login

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

• Players may not have the option to send, accept or decline friend requests.
• Blocked players are not added to the Blocked Players list and are not prevented from joining games.
• Reinforcement may not be available for some players who join a game in progress.
• Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
• Game may crash if the player changes the text language while on a mission.
• Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
• Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
• Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
• Spear’s targeting is inconsistent, making it hard to lock-on to larger enemies.
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
• Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
• Area around Automaton Detector Tower makes blue stratagems such as the Hellbomb bounce and be repelled when trying to call them down close to the tower.
• Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
• Some weapons in the tutorial have missing parts presenting as question marks in some cases.

[Ghost]

Helldivers 2 community floods Steam with over 200,000 positive reviews to save its reputation.

Quote

 

Sony ended up reversing its decision, but not before the game received widespread criticism online, as well as being mass review bombed.

 

Helldivers 2 received close to 400,000 negative reviews, but now that the decision has been reversed, players are flooding the game with positive reviews to undo some of the damage that was done.

 

On May 6th, the day that Sony backtracked on its decision, Helldivers 2 received over 207,000 positive reviews on Steam. 143,000 of these were reviews that were previously negative being edited and made positive, while the remaining 64,000 were new positive reviews.

 

 

Community manager Twinbeard gives an update on Discord:

Quote

Ideally, we would've liked to have some more information before posting an announcement here. However, as questions about the details surrounding account linking keep pouring in, and understandably so, we feel it's better to say something, even if it's not much.

 

We don't have any updated information about the account linking yet, particularly of anything related to players outside PSN regions. To clarify and per Sony's earlier statement, mandatory account linking will not be going forward. There are still ongoing discussions between parties about the details and we at Arrowhead acknowledge and respect that it will take some time to sort those out. We therefore kindly ask of you, our cherished community, hardcore helldivers and precious players, to try to be patient as well. As soon as we learn more we'll post an update here.

 

Furthermore, while we have your attention. We're approaching one million (!) users in here. Crazy! That means that for any topic with a large general interest, there are hundreds, sometimes even thousands of mentions and DM's aimed at us community managers and moderators during a workday. We can't reply to all of it, but we see a lot. A warm thank you for your everlasting support of the game and for believing in us at Arrowhead. Equally important, however, is trying to be respectful of each other and of our colleagues as well. The last few days have been challenging for everyone. No matter to whom you're writing or what you're commenting on, remember there's a person on the other side. With so many people here, we're bound to have different opinions. We all make mistakes and we learn from them. That's as it should be in life. When possible, discussion is always a better option than arguing.

 

We ventured into the storm together and we'll come out of it as one.

 

As always, happy helldiving 

Edited May 7 by Ghost

[Ghost]

New Warbond drops on June 13. More details: https://blog.playstation.com/2024/06/06/helldivers-ii-enlists-the-viper-commandos-warbond-on-june-13/

 

 

[Ghost]

Patch notes for version 1.000.400

 

Read more about the balancing updates in the blog here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/5998312279129319530?l=english

 

Spoiler

Overview
For this patch, some of the major areas of interest are

• Visible Supply Lines & Attack Origins in the Galactic War.
• Stratagem, weapon, planet, and enemy balancing updates.
• Various crash fixes, stability improvements, and other updates.
• Invite-only lobby creation.
• The right most option in the Lobby settings. Currently only localized in English. Additional languages coming in the next patch

Balancing
Goal with stratagem balance changes this patch:
With these balance changes we wanted to buff up some of the weaker stratagems to make them more viable and add more possibility for variety in the loadouts. We also changed a few to make them more consistent, but the goal was to keep a similar or higher power level.
We are looking into the stratagems more to see if there are any other stratagems that might need some buffs or changes to make them more viable. We also want to be better at explaining what our goals are with the changes, please see the linked blog post for more information.

 

A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry

• Decreased spread
• Prioritize larger targets
• Increased target distance from 75 to 100m
• Decreased Rockets per salvo 2 to 1 (to get a better ammo economy)
• Increased explosion radius from 1m to 4m
• Decreased explosion armor penetration (Explosion can no longer damage heavy armored enemies. The projectile still has enough AP to damage heavily armored targets.)
• Increased projectile damage from 200 to 300

A/MG-43 Machine gun sentry
Reduced cooldown from 180 sec to 120 sec.

A/MG-43 Machine gun Sentry, A/G-16 Gatling Sentry, A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry, A/AC-8 Autocannon Sentry, A/M-12 Mortar Sentry, A/M-23 EMS Mortar Sentry:
Increased durability* from 0% to 80%

 

E/MG-101 HMG Emplacement
Increased rotation speed by 100%

MD-6 Anti-Personnel Minefield
Increased explosion damage from 250 to 350

MD-I4 Incendiary Mines
Increased explosion damage from 150 to 210

Orbital Gatling
Increased fire rate by 25%
Increased rounds per salvo from 30 to 60
Increased armor penetration (Can damage heavy armored enemies)
Decreased cooldown from 80 sec to 70 sec

Orbital Precision strike
Decreased cooldown from 100 sec to 90 sec
Decreased Spawn/Call-in time from 4 sec to 2 sec

Orbital Airburst Strike
Decreased cooldown from 120 sec to 100 sec

Eagle 110MM Rocket Pods
While these changes may look like a straight up nerf, that is not the intention. Please see the blogpost for more information.
Improved targeting
Increased projectile armor penetration (now does 100% damage to heavily armored enemies instead of 50%)
Decreased projectile damage 600 to 250 (to compensate for the improved targeting and the extra damage from the increased armor penetration.)
Decreased explosion armor penetration (explosion can no longer damage heavily armored enemies)

Eagle Strafing Run
Increased uses from 3 to 4
Increased armor penetration, can now damage heavily armored enemies.

GL-21 Grenade Launcher
Increased explosion damage by from 350 to 400

MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun
Increased projectile damage from 100 to 150
Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 23% to 33%
Decreased fire rate from 450/750/900 to 450/600/750
Decreased reload time from 7 to 5.5 sec
Increased stagger strength

 

MG-43 Machine Gun
Decreased reload time from 4 to 3.5 seconds
Increased max amount of Magazines from 3 to 4
 

MG-43 Machine Gun, A/MG-43 Machine gun Sentry, A/G-16 Gatling Sentry and EXO-45 Patriot Exosuits Gatling
Increased projectile damage from 80 to 90
Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 7.5% to 25%

AR-23 Liberator, M-105 Stalwart and AX/AR-23 “Guard dog”
Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 23%

AR-23C Liberator Concussive
Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 23% to 35%

BR-14 Adjudicator
Increased magazine capacity from 25 to 30
Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 20%

AR-61 Tenderizer
Increased projectile damage from 60 to 95
Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 17%
Decreased ammo capacity from 35 to 30
Decreased number of magazines from 10 to 8
Increased stagger strength

PLAS-101 Purifier
Increased projectile armor penetration to be the same as the explosion
Decreased explosion damage falloff

CB-9 Explosive Crossbow
Increased explosion armor penetration to be the same as the projectile
Increased demolition strength (Can destroy Bug holes and Bot Fabricator buildings)
Added medium penetration tag

R-36 Eruptor
Increased total damage from 420 to 570 damage per shot

R-63 Diligence
Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 25%
Some enemies have durable body parts that receive only a portion of base damage from projectiles

Other
Updated Recoil stance modifiers: We made changes to the recoil stance modifiers to make them more consistent and also reward being prone more. Almost all of them will improve the recoil and only a two have been made worse (and only by 10%).

See the blogpost for a more detailed description.

Gameplay
General

Removed operation modifier AA-Defenses: Reducing the stratagem slots by 1

• We want to look over the operation modifiers in the future. Right now there are too few of them which become repetitive and the ones we have do not create variety or promote different playstyles. For now, we removed this one because it only encourages the players to bring the best stratagems and does not promote variety.

Disabled the Retrieve Essential Personnel defend event mission for the time being

• This is to give the mission the proper attention and care that it deserves as it is now deemed not fun enough or performing as we want it to.

Super Samples

• Super samples now spawn on difficulty 6. The reason for this change is that we feel that their existence only on difficulty 7+ forced some players to play the game on a harder difficulty than they wanted to comfortably play on. We do however still want a gating of them but a less punishing one.
   
• The SEAF Artillery stratagem is no longer blocked by stratagem jammers or Ion Storms, and is available after the mission timer ends and the destroyer leaves close orbit.
• Enemies in melee range of the gates in the Evacuate High-Value Assets mission will now attack it more consistently.
• Added the ability to chat from in-game menus and mission loading screen.
• Updated some first person crosshairs to improve readability.

Social

• Invite-Only lobbies are now supported

Armors

• New armor passive Peak Physique (+50% melee damage, +30% weapon ergonomics)

Planets & Hazards

• Spike Plant
• The spike plant that appears on certain planets has been reworked.
• No longer causes bleed or stamina drain if hit by the plant explosion or spikes.
• Now “pops” three times sending spikes everywhere, dealing increased damage.

Fire Tornados

• Fire tornados have had their behavior changed, they should no longer feel like they actively respond to player movement, and should move more randomly.
• While a fire tornado storm takes place, enemy vision is reduced. Player vision is unaffected.
• Fire tornados being more random should result in more variance in situations players find themselves in. Tornados are significantly less likely to pile up and overlap on extraction points or objectives, and will generally be a bit easier to deal with.

Tremors

• Tremors have had their spawning tweaked to be slightly more random.
• Tremors have had their epicenter size and effect range increased.
• These changes should result in more situations where enemies away from the player get stunned, as well as reducing how consistently the player has a tremor occur next to them.

Visibility

• A lot of planets have had their fog amounts tweaked to be a bit less harsh and dense, to provide less fatigue from constantly fighting on planets with bad visibility. We still intend there to be foggy planets with worse visibility, but the balance was a bit off.
• Desert planets such as Erata Prime, Chort Bay, Hellmire, and similar.
• Highlands planets such as Varylia 5, Matar Bay, Oshaune, and similar.
• Artificial light sources have had their intensity rebalanced and reduced across the board to fix situations of lights completely blinding the player.

Unexploded Hellbomb

• The unexploded malfunctioning hellbombs that can sometimes be found on planets will now explode immediately if hit with strong explosions or heavy weaponry. They will still have the same delay if hit by small arms fire or weaker attacks.

Vegetation

• Vegetation that’s large enough to slow the player now has an extra function. When inside the vegetation helldivers will be harder to detect, reducing their detection range by enemies. This effect stacks with other detection reducing effects such as nighttime, being crouched or prone, or things such as the scout armor passive.

Ion Storms

• Added additional VFX for Ion Storms.

Enemies

• Acid effect
• The acid effect applied by hunters, bug mines, etc. now allows you to sprint while under the effect and slows you by 30% instead of 50%. Duration has been increased from 3 to 4 seconds. These changes are intended to make it less punishing for players to be slowed while fighting the Terminids, This allows us to use it in more places without making the experience very punishing, for example the Bile Spewers.

Armored enemy balance

• We have toned down the amount of heavily armored enemies like Bile Titans, Chargers on higher difficulties and instead spawn more hordes of smaller enemies, the difference should be quite noticeable and the amount should be at least 30% less than before during bug breaches. We have also toned down slightly how many Hulks that spawn for the Automatons. Our intent is to ease up on the demand of anti-tank weapons and by having more of the other enemies give a better incentive for the group to bring stratagems and weapons that take care of hordes.

Patrols

• Patrol spawning is now back to how it worked before patch 01.000.300 with some slight tweaks so that the levels are less empty if you are far away from important locations with enemy presence.

Stunning

• Medium and large sized enemies now don't get stunned as easily. This will not affect the stratagems that stun, and will mostly just affect how easily the Pummeler can stun larger enemies.

Terminids

• Bile Spewers & Nursing Spewers
• Spewers will now get slowed if they lose their legs.
• Spewer puke now applies the acid effect.
• Spewer puke now can only damage helldivers up to 4 times per second and the helldiver cannot take damage multiple times from the same projectile. This should reduce instances where you are instantly killed by it.

Bile Titan

• The Bile Titan’s head is slightly less durable against weaker anti-tank weapons. It's not a large change, and will mostly matter for weapons like the railgun.
• The Bile Titan’s puke can now only damage the helldiver 4 times per second and the helldiver cannot take damage multiple times from the same projectile. The damage is still very deadly so running through their puke is not recommended. Their puke now also has a bigger spread.

Charger Behemoth

• The Charger Behemoth is now joining the battle on higher difficulties, it can now also take more damage than before. This enables us to spawn fewer chargers but still retain the difficulty.

Chargers

• Will now only show bleedout effects from the body if the bleedout state has started. It can still show bleedout effects from the mouth without having started the bleedout state.

Automatons

• Hulk Scorcher
• The Hulk’s flamethrower now does less damage and cannot damage helldivers more than 4 times per second. In addition, the helldiver cannot be damaged multiple times by the same flame projectile. This should reduce instances where you are instantly killed by it.

Automaton Tanks

• The Tank armor value on the front has been lowered to be the same as the non-vent sections on the rear of the tank. The intent was initially that it was supposed to be more armored in the front, but the visual language did not show that.
• The vents on the back of the Tanks turret still has the same armor value as before, but will check for explosion directions correctly now.
• The damage of exploding automaton jump packs has been decreased by 50%, it will still set you on fire though.

Galactic War

• Introducing Warp Links (Supply Lines & Origin of Attacks):
• Supply lines were previously not shown on the Galactic War map to reduce clutter and improve readability. However based on the feedback from our community we have made an implementation showing them on the map. This solution tries to maintain the general readability while still exposing the system to players in game.
• You will now also be able to see which planet an attack is originating from, potentially allowing for the community to stop the attack at its source.
• We have also updated visuals in the sector and planet info pop-ups.

Fixes

• The FAF-14 Spear targeting has been reworked and should now function much better. However it has lost the ability to target Automaton spawners, this is not intended and will be fixed in the future.
• Intense Heat and Extreme Cold environmental modifiers will now affect the Quasar Cannon’s reload speed and will show correctly in the HUD.
• Reload speed on Cold planets -2.5 sec
• Reload speed on Hot planets +2.5 sec
• The radar pulse that detects enemies on the mini-map is now visible.
• Most of Automatons weapons have now gotten tighter limits to how much the projectile they shoot can deviate from its weapons muzzle angle. What this means is that situations where devastators shoot sideways and similar should be fixed.
• The weapons of the Exosuits are now allowed small adjustments in the angle they fire their projectiles versus their muzzle angle. This should make their weapons more accurate.
• Ballistic shield now collides with grenades.
• The unblock button should no longer disappear from the social menu.
• Blocked players can no longer join the blockers lobby through recent players.
• Fixed a bug where enemies killed, missions played, and missions completed stats would not be properly displayed in armory.
• Fixed issue where the player can throw an unlimited amount of grenades by pressing the "Quick grenade" button right after closing the Stratagem menu.
• Helldiver now also switches to the last active weapon when out of grenades, fixing the issue where they would be holding a stratagem ball without the stratagem menu being open.
• Fixed some text overlap in various locations.
• The burning effect applied to the player when a combat walker dies is now a normal burn. The intent is that you should be able to escape it alive. But you will be on fire so hit the ground!
• The extraction shuttle can no longer take damage preventing extraction. New high grade materials directly from Super Earth R&D have been utilized.
• On PC you can now navigate the super credits menu with “WASD” keys
• Fixed an issue where sample count in missions were incorrectly displayed
• Levels no longer generate with blocked areas preventing player progression.
• Your Ships bridge is no longer cast in perpetual shadow.
• Reduced situations where blue stratagems would bounce when placed next to the detector tower.
• The warbond menu now displays correct emote & victory poses in the thumbnail.
• War Medals cap is now displayed in the UI.
• Fixed a bug where the Helldivers armor could appear invisible for other players.
• Refined player reporting UI.
• Fixed issue where Helldivers could be launched into the air if close to a Bile Titan or Factory Strider corpse.
• Fix for Factory Strider sometimes spawned an extra model after being destroyed.
• Reduced situations where helldivers could spontaneously die while walking into seemingly walkable valleys on some planets.
• Fixed rare issue on arctic planets where players could spontaneously die close to large bodies of water.
• Fixed Pelican-1 sometimes leaving immediately after any player gets onboard.
• Fixed bug where helldiver could get stuck in grenade idle state after throwing grenades
• Fixed Superior Packing Methodology not working for other peers.
• Recent Players list will now include hot-joining players.
• Relaxed disconnection policy for PC users.
• Fixed an issue where previous sessions' player names might not be saved correctly when restarting.
• Defend event attack origin now visualized when hovering the planet with the defend event or the attack origin planet.
• Implemented outlines for previously poorly readable texts.

Crash Fixes

• General crash fixes.
• Fix for a crash that could occur when applying wounds to multiple enemies.
• PlayStation Only: Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause a crash when switching between Quality and Performance mode.
• Fix for a crash when a player leaves after all their railguns have exploded.
• Fix for crash that could occur when rejoining a previous session
• Fix for crash that occurred when trying to throw a snowball in ADS mode
• Fix for potential crash when loadout is aborted during hotjoin.
• Fix for rare crash linked to leaving a session while aiming a weapon.

Known Issues

• These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
• Sending friend requests via friend code in game currently does not work.
• Players may be unable to be joined or invited to the game.
• Players added to the 'Recent Players' list will appear in the middle of the list.
• Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
• Spear targeting is unable to target Automaton Spawners
• Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
• Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
• Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights.
• Plasma Punisher is unable to shoot out of the shield generators.
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
• Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
• "Hand Carts" ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown.
• Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head.
• Charger’s butt does not take damage from explosions.
• Players may become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress.
• Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress.
• Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
• "Raise Flag of Super Earth" objective does not show a progress bar.
• Mission count in the Career tab is being reset to zero after every game restart.
• Some weapons’ descriptions are out-of-date and don’t reflect their current design.
• BR-14 Adjudicator has incorrect recoil values

 

 

Edited June 14 by Ghost