Helldivers 2 has been in a bit of a quiet period lately, relatively speaking. With Arrowhead largely busy focusing on bug fixes and putting out stuff at a bit of a slower cadence, some players have been getting a bit tired of the same old thing, with an unfortunate milestone the game’s hit PC playerbase-wise having prompted some debate as to whether things might be getting a bit too static.
While the switch in how Arrowhead’s approached solving issues and deploying new content in the game got a lot of initial support, the results have been a bit mixed in practice, with some gear and upgrades in particular – the spear’s a big example – seeing a steady stream of problems afflict them, even after previously recieving fixes. Arrowhead continues to work hard to whack problems as they crop up, but you can kind of understand the frustration.
As this has been happening, the game’s 24-hour player number peak on Steam, according to SteamDB (thanks, Forbes), sits at 45,315, which is only about 10% of the initial peak of 458,709 it recorded back in February. Now, to put this in context, that decline hasn’t happened overnight and certainly isn’t that abnormal – the game’s player numbers on the platform have been gradually coming down since that point, having last hit the 200,000 mark in late April.
This doesn’t necessarily mean Arrowhead’s done anything wrong, even if the whole discourse caused by Sony with regards to account linking probably didn’t help matters. In all likelihood, a lot of it’s simply down to the nature of people’s playing habits – sure, some folks will stick with one game long-term regardless of what’s happening, but most people, at least to a degree, hop from thing to thing fairly regularly, be those things new releases, older games they want to replay, or existing games that’ve just had fresh updates.
That said, while Arrowhead’s still busy focusing on fixes – having just rectified an issue with the Superior Packing Methodology ship module – the relative lull in big changes since the last round of balancing tweaks and the Viper Commandos warbond has some players questioning whether it might be worth the studio switching this up a bit in order to try and keep them more engaged.
In response a post on the subject on the game’s subreddit, you’ll find about an even split between folks who reckon sticking with the fixes to help establish a more stable base for future additions is still the key, and others who reckon an injection of content needs to arrive soon. Naturally, there’s no consensus as to what this new content should be if big stuff like factions are out of the question, with everything from new enemy and mission types to planets with fresh biomes having made lists.
What are you most keen to see Arrowhead do with regards to Helldivers 2 at the moment? Is there anything that you’re waiting for before you dive back in if you’ve put it down in last few months? Let us know below!