The developers of Helldivers 2 have received a lot of criticism for nerfing the best weapons in the game. MeinMMO editor Dariusz Müller, however, believes that this was the right decision.
Helldivers 2 has significantly downgraded the best weapons in the game with a substantial patch.
- The Breaker has fewer shots and greater recoil,
- The Railgun can no longer break heavy armor in safe mode
- The shield generator backpack now has a noticeably longer delay after the shield has been temporarily deactivated due to incoming damage.
In short, Arrowhead has massively nerfed the meta loadout, maybe even destroyed it. This frustrates many players, some are even really angry and cannot forgive the developers for this interference 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. Nevertheless, I firmly believe: 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 for the game, you need to take a closer look at the name of the game: HELL – DIVER. The gameplay of the co-op shooter is meant to be challenging. Especially at higher difficulty levels, you should feel like the hell is collapsing above you.
That’s why you don’t simply respawn after dying or get magically revived. Each time your Helldiver falls victim to bugs or robots and dies, a new Helldiver is sent into battle as a replacement by the destroyer. The Over-Earth sends one brave soldier after another to their death.
It is therefore important for the game’s principle and lore that the difficulty level “Helldive” truly feels like a trip to hell. You must face a seemingly insurmountable challenge. When you successfully complete a mission, it is the best and most liberating feeling ever.
Overpowered weapons prevent appropriate challenges
With the meta that dominated the shooter in recent weeks, the high difficulty levels were no longer a major challenge. Even on level 8 or 9, the missions were not so difficult to manage in a 4-man squad. We sometimes split into 2-man teams and tackled the various objectives and side missions in parallel to finish the 40-minute missions even faster.
However, that’s nonsense and harms long-term motivation when we can complete the hardest missions in pairs. What mattered was simply carrying the right loadout – Breaker, Railgun, shield generator backpack, railgun strike.
At level 7, no one in our team regularly died with the loadout, and even the syringes were hardly used. At level 8, we only gathered deaths when we split into 2-man teams and triggered a bug outbreak at a nest, lost control, and fought against 8 rushers and 3 acid titans at the same time while slowly running out of Railgun ammunition.
The Railgun was a fly swatter for rushers and acid titans
Rushers 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 meant to teach Helldivers to fear and make your life a literal hell at the highest difficulty levels. But with the Railgun, even these elite enemies were just small flies that we squashed while passing.
You could break the armor on the legs of 10 rushers with the Railgun. Fighting against 3-4 rushers at the same time was therefore not a big problem. Even 1-2 acid titans could each Helldiver crush alone.
That should not be the case. I should not be able to take out the strongest enemies in the game at the highest difficulty levels with a single weapon – especially since I couldn’t even handle the unsafe mode of the Railgun particularly well and just used the weaker, safe mode.
If you can’t beat level 9 without the old Railgun, you’re just not good enough
We shooter players can rarely admit in PvP when someone else is better. I understand that. Really. But in a PvE game, it is perfectly okay to lower the difficulty level when the challenge is too high.
If you can’t make level 9 after the nerfs, it is not because the developers messed up the balancing. If you can’t make level 9 without an OP Railgun, then you are simply not good enough for level 9.
This is, of course, in no way disrespectful or insulting. We gamers simply need to admit where our gaming limits are. Difficulty levels are not campaigns that you have to complete.
Overpowered weapons 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 that are so strong that even I can achieve a difficulty level that should be too high for me.
The moment a loadout is so powerful that players can overcome challenges above their abilities, the game becomes boring for the best players. They then need new, stronger enemies, higher difficulty levels, or other solutions to have fun. And then the worse players would be frustrated again and demand buffs so that they too can complete these new missions.
If we only buff and do not nerf, even though a weapon is simply too strong, we harm the balancing and end up going in circles in the long run. Arrowhead made the right decision with the nerf, even if the loadout that I enjoyed the most is not as good as it used to be.
If you still miss the pre-nerf Breaker, perhaps a look into the future will comfort you, as new weapons are coming to the game next week: The first content update of Helldivers 2 brings new weapons and armor – This is what they can do
