The developers of Helldivers 2 have received a lot of criticism for nerfing the game’s best weapons. However, MeinMMO editor Dariusz Müller is convinced that this was the right decision.
Helldivers 2 has significantly worsened the game’s best weapons with an extensive patch.
In short, Arrowhead has massively nerfed, perhaps even destroyed, the meta loadout. This frustrates many players, some are even really angry and cannot forgive the developers for this intervention in the balancing. Instead of nerfing the good weapons, the bad ones should have been improved.
I also had a lot of fun with the loadout, especially with the shield generator backpack and the railgun. However, I am firmly of the opinion: These nerfs are really good for the game and the right decision!
The right mix of challenge and fun
To understand why the nerf is so important to the game, you have to take a closer look at the name of the game: HELL – DIVER. The gameplay of the co-op shooter is intended to be challenging. Especially on the high levels of difficulty, you should feel as if hell is collapsing on you.
That’s why you don’t just spawn again after you die or are magically revived. Every time your Helldiver falls victim to the bugs or robots and dies, a new Helldiver is sent into battle by the Destroyer as a replacement. The over-earth sends one brave soldier after another to their deaths.
So it’s important for the gameplay and the lore of the shooter that the “Helldive” difficulty level really feels like a trip to hell. You must face what feels like an insurmountable challenge. When you complete a mission successfully, it is the best and most liberating feeling ever.
Helldivers 2 shows the new war bond “On the Razor’s Edge” in a trailer
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Weapons that are too powerful prevent a proper challenge
With the meta that has dominated the shooter over the past few weeks, the high levels of difficulty were no longer a big challenge. Even at level 8 or 9, the missions weren’t that difficult to complete in a squad of four. Sometimes we even split up into teams of two and tackled the various objectives and side missions in parallel in order to finish the 40-minute missions even quicker.
However, that’s a lot of nonsense and damages long-term motivation when we can complete the most difficult missions with two people. After all, the only important thing was to carry the right loadout – breaker, railgun, shield generator backpack, railgun strike.
At level 7, no one died with the loadout, and even the syringes were hardly used up. At level 8 the only time we racked up deaths was by splitting into teams of 2 and triggering a bug outbreak at a nest, losing control and fighting with 8 strikers and 3 acid titans at once while slowly running out of railgun ammo.
The railgun was a fly swatter for strikers and acid titans
Storms are nasty armored bugs that attack you head-on like a bull. Acid Titans are huge and also armored. They can easily trample you to death or wipe you out with a single acid attack.
These powerful opponents are designed to strike fear into Helldivers and make your life a literal hell on the highest difficulty levels. With the railgun, even these elite opponents were just small flies that we squashed as we passed.
You were able to break the armor on the legs of 10 strikers with the Railgun. Fighting 3-4 strikers at the same time wasn’t a big problem. Each Helldiver could also flatten 1-2 Acid Titans with her alone.
That shouldn’t be the case. I shouldn’t be able to use a single weapon to take out the game’s strongest opponents on the highest difficulty levels without a chance – especially because I wasn’t even particularly good at using the railgun’s unsafe mode and simply used the weaker, safe mode.
If you can’t make it to level 9 without the old railgun, you’re just too bad
We shooter players can rarely admit to ourselves in PvP when someone else is better. I understand that. Really. But in a PvE game, it’s okay to lower the difficulty if the challenge is too high.
If you can’t reach level 9 after the nerfs, it’s not because the developers screwed up the balancing. If you can’t get to level 9 without an OP railgun, then you’re just too bad for level 9.
Of course, this is not meant to be disrespectful or offensive in any way. We gamers simply have to admit where our gaming limits are. Difficulty levels are not campaigns that you have to play through.
Weapons that are too powerful make the game too easy for good players
It’s okay if I can’t make level 9 anymore. For other players who are better than me, the difficulty level is still manageable. It is not the developers’ job to give me weapons so powerful that even I can manage a difficulty level that should be too high for me.
The moment a loadout is so powerful that players are tackling challenges beyond their abilities, the game becomes boring for the best players. They then need new, stronger opponents, higher levels of difficulty or other solutions in order to have fun. And then the worse players would be frustrated again and demand buffs so that they can also complete these new missions.
If we only buff and don’t nerf, even though a weapon is simply too strong, we damage the balance and only go around in circles in the long term. Arrowhead made the right decision with the nerf, even if the loadout I enjoyed the most isn’t as good as it was before.
If you’re still mourning the pre-Nerf Breaker, perhaps you’ll be comforted by a look into the future, because new weapons will be coming into the game next week: The first content update of Helldivers 2 brings new weapons and armor – they can do that