Updated 08 August 2024 for HD2 version 1.001.002 (Escalation of Freedom)

One of the ways I engage with games is by creating new things for them. Usually, that takes the form of modding- adding content to games by modifying them (or more often, building tools to modify games). This is fun in and of itself, something to do outside of the game but still connected to it, allowing me to express both my passion and creativity.

Sometimes, I can't mod a game because I don't have the skill, time, energy, experience, or maybe its just impossible/impractical on a technical level, but I still want to create things for the game. While to me it does feel less impactful / less... valuable...? than modding or creating actual things to share, I still want to do it, even if its just dreaming up stuff and writing down ideas.

On that note, I'm going to take a moment to talk about all the ideas and fixes sloshing around in my noggin for the popular video game Helldivers 2!

The Good

Like many others early this year, I found my patriotic side and joined the fight to maintain Managed Democracy™ against the evil liberty-hating Terminids and Automatons. Since then, Helldivers 2 has become my go-to shooter and I have put in quite a few hours of protecting freedom.

I think Helldivers 2 is a great game that combines fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled, stress-inducing encounters with small team cooperative PvE play. As a longtime fan of multiplayer shooters, it is quite nice to face off against the game rather than other humans for once. On top of all that, it does a great job of making you feel powerful (50x killstreak anyone?), while at the same time making you feel like you really are up against a wall, and there's no way out. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in shooters or other fast-paced games.

But- nothing's perfect, and Helldivers 2 has seen its fair share of issues. While it hasn't completely deterred me from enjoying the game, they're worth mentioning since this is apparently a review as well as a brainstorming session.

The Bad

Server issues

On launch, Helldivers 2 had server issues - capacity issues really - that prevented a lot of people from playing. I don't know much about this since I actually wasn't involved with Helldivers 2 at the time (I tend to be skeptical of big trendy things, especially when they cost money lol). I think a lot, if not all of this, was the dev team / publisher not being prepared for the positive reception they received. While I commend their efforts to get it under control, its still a blemish.

Bugs (not the fun-to-shoot kind)

For the longest time, damage-over-time effects were nonfunctional for non-hosts. It's kinda wild to me how long this took to get fixed and it's still frustrating to think about because there was no direct indication it wasn't working, which severely hampered several weapons and strategems.

Additionally, a ship module (a permanent upgrade) called Superior Packing Methodology seems to break every other patch (hopefully it's fixed for good this time), and considering how essential it is to enable certain playstyles, it's incredibly annoying when I see it not working and have to wait for an indeterminate amount of time (sometimes several hotfixes without it actually being fixed) before it can be used again.

Also, a ton of crashes. Just... so many. While the game is pretty stable in the long stretches between patches, after a recent patch the game became literally unplayable. It was a large patch, so I can kinda understand, but these crashes affected so many people I have a hard time believing they weren't occurring during QA testing.

Sony

Not going into it here. A web search for Sony + Helldivers 2 will yield far more discussion that I can generalize here.

Underwhelming new equipment

It seemed like every time something new dropped it was dead-on-arrival in the current "meta". Not like, just not as good, but actively bad and feels bad. Looking at you, Polar Patriots.

It felt like new additions were being designed in a bubble with no thought for how they stack up against other options.

Approach to balance

Finally, something that frustrated me on a metagame level was the dev team's over-willingness to reduce the power of strong options (nerf) rather than increase the power of weak options (buff). When nerfing strong options, players suddenly feel weaker, and a new meta coalesces around the next strongest option. When instead buffing weak things, players are encouraged to experiment and exercise their creativity, to find something they enjoy playing.

Generally, when people glom onto a meta, it's because its hard to use anything else, since the power of the meta is required to overcome the challenges presented. Nerfing things in a vacuum without considering why other things were overrepresented is, in my opinion, the wrong approach.

On this last point, the dev team has actually seemed to change course for the better. The most recent major patch brought significant buffs to a lot of underused weapons and strategems. They're not done though, and they've said as much, so hopefully it's a good sign for the future direction of balancing.

It's still a good game

I hope I haven't seemed like I hate the game. I really quite like it, and it's had more staying power in my game rotation than many others. There's problems that I hope get fixed, and problems that are being fixed. I believe the dev team genuinely wants to make a good game and I really appreciate that. It does show. I hope they can take the community's suggestions and feedback to heart. Thanks for letting me get those complaints off my chest!

Hopefully that's a good enough segue into the real content of this post - my brainstorming session!

The Dreams

I've had a lot of ideas for this game over its lifespan, most I've forgotten, some I've preserved here, and still others I've yet to flesh out.

I want to make something clear though: ideas are cheap. They're really a dime-a-dozen. Weeding the good and the bad, and doing the work to actually implement them is the hard part. I have no delusions that any of these will ever see the light of day in an official capacity, because at the end of the day, I'm not working on this game. I just enjoy it and enjoy imagining things for it.

I've split the ideas into several categories, mostly based on how they impact the game, or the features they change.

Not balance related / QoL / UI

These ideas don't really impact the actual game at all. They're mostly for cool little stats, accessibility, or fixing annoyances.

Strategem kill counter

We have a killstreak counter that appears as a little skull with a number next to it. This counts the number of enemies killed in a window of time. If too long passes until the next kill, the counter disappears the the number resets. It's a good, but very basic feature.

Often, the things that cause the most kills are strategems. If you get a lot of kills at once with the strategem, you can see how many you killed with the killstreak counter. However, there are some limitations. Long-running strategems, such as the barrages, may not kill quickly enough to keep the counter going. You might see multiple small number counters (minimum is 3), or even none at all.

That's why I'd like to see a strategem total counter. This wouldn't replace the existing killstreak counter, rather it'd go alongside it. It count the entire total across the strategem, only resetting when the strategem ends (likely a few seconds afterwards). This would communicate much more effectively than the streak counter how effective your strategem was. It'd also have no minimum, allowing you to weep when you completely whiff 😛.

These could even be stacked for multiple strategems:

Post-Game Damage Statistics

After completing a mission, you have the options to see the statistics of the mission.

This includes number of kills, that alone doesn't tell the whole story. I'd like to see a "damage done" statistic, so even if a player doesn't get the final shot, they can still feel like they did something (no I'm not bad at getting kills... I'm just supporting... right guys... right...?).

At any rate, this would actually be pretty necessary for some of the changes below, since the division between kills and damage would be greater.

QoL

Telegraph Strategem

A mostly accessibility-related change is to show an outline / telegraph of a strategem's danger zone, before throwing (and possibly even after throwing). I feel like the game doesn't do a great job of communicating this beforehand, so having even something that highlights where your strategem will go would be valuable. It'd be particularly useful for new players who don't necessarily have the feel for the size / position of strategems yet. Or if they don't realize Eagles mostly go perpendicular to the throwing angle, except the strafing run which is inline.

Sticky Strategem Beacons

This is something that's always bugged me, and though it's probably confirmation bias, I feel like it might even be getting worse. When a strategem beacon lands on a valid surface, it stays there. That's good! It helps it be predictable! If the surface isn't valid however, it'll bounce around until it either finds a valid surface or times out. This has gotten me killed more times than I can count because I wasn't expecting this rock to bounce a strategem while that other one sticks just fine. For at the very least offensive striking strategems, I wish that the beacon would STICK to ANY surface it first touches. That way, if I kill myself because I flub a throw, it doesn't feel like bullshit.

Either of the two above can be made into modules, boosters, etc (though at the cost of new players), but they are things that I think need to happen.

Gameplay / Balance Things

Here come the more outlandish ideas - those that can break game balance, those that require large amounts of dev resources to implement, and opinionated things. They're mostly ordered from least crazy to more crazy (though don't hold me to it, I've reordered these subsections a lot).

Sample Conversion

The problem

Later on in progression, super samples, despite having super in the name, feel like the least valuable kind of sample, since the bottleneck is always on rare samples (or common samples, if earlier on). This limits the incentive to explore the map (which would increase enemy encounters, and as a result, fun). Additionally, super samples often sit at cap while scrounging up the other two, which doesn't feel great.

The solution: breaking down samples

To hit two shriekers with one rocket, I propose adding a system that allows Helldivers to "break down" samples to lower grades - essentially trading in super samples for rare samples, and rare samples for common. I'm not going to state an exact conversion ratio here, since I'm not experienced enough to decide what is balanced and what's not. That said, I think super samples should yield a decent quantity of rare samples, and rare samples should yield nearly an equal quantity of common samples.

Building up samples?

There should be something to move in the other direction too, if only to avoid the negative connotation of capping a currency. To that end, I propose that when capped, excess samples are converted (with a ratio) to the next higher up grade. Samples would be passively converted at the end of the mission, rather than requiring player interaction. When done this way, we avoid forcing players to decide whether to make room for lower grade samples to avoid over-capping vs saving up samples, or forgetting to do so and not getting rewards.

Requisition & Samples

Finally, with this new system in place for conversion between samples, requisition is the odd man out, being nearly entirely useless after level 25, save for the odd ship module that costs a couple missions in requisition (and a ton of missions in samples). To resolve this, players should be allowed to purchase samples with requisition. It shouldn't be a great rate though - mainly to help players avoid sitting at cap for what feels like forever. It could even be done with a new currency, where excess requisition rolls into the new currency, and that currency is used to purchase samples, making this system similar to the one above for samples.

Player Armor

Super Store

The Super Store is nifty, but the rotation is pretty long. This is particularly impactful when players want to acquire armor with traits in a specific weight class, but there's only one, and it's Super Store exclusive, and it won't show up for another few weeks. This could be remedied

Armor Traits

On the topic of armor traits, I'd like to see more traits available on more weight classes. Like having Democracy Protects on Light or Scout on Heavy.

I also have some trait ideas, two of which are:

• Stun resistance
  • For heavy usage of stunning tactics
• Stealth
  • Moreso than just Scout, but without radar ping enhancing

Smoke Changes

Smoke feels very inconsistent on Bots, with them sometimes seeming to ignore it altogether and continue tracking the Helldivers through it. On Bugs, its feels worse than useless. I want to keep smoke screens since it feels like an essential component of warfare, but with some changes to support a higher strength.

Enemies caught in smoke have their effectiveness reduced

This includes a slight-to-moderate slowing effect, impaired vision, and AI changes. The AI changes in particular allow smoke to be quite useful against Bugs, since it could involve things like a drastic increase in reaction times (enemies take longer idle times between starting next actions). Since smoke doesn't do damage, we want to make it much easier to damage enemies that are smoked. Bots can similarly be affected, for example by restricting their communication to other members of their squad.

Imagine beekeepers using smoke on the bees before rummaging around in their hives. They become more docile / easier to work with. We can transfer this concept to the various smoke options in-game to bring more usefulness to them.

Individual Boosters

Boosters are cool but they affect the whole team. These boosters only affect the player bringing them but they focus on modifying playstyles rather than bringing a strict buff.

These are designed similarly to armor traits, but more impactful.

Here are some of my ideas that can be used as examples of the kinds of changes they can make:

Stealth Specialization

• Limited Range of detection
• Slows down player movement
• Weapon changes (reduced non-weakspot damage, lowers range of detection on all gunshots (not by too much, it's not an actual suppressor attachment))
• Enemies don't detect where strategem beacons came from (still be put on alert)

Super Saboteur

• Reduces direct damage in favor of applying negative effects
• Better at operating terminals

Scavenger

• Grants a license to SuperSearcher, Super Earth's finest automatic search service
• Highlights samples and other pickups at a larger range
• Supply pickups are more effective
• Smaller maximum holding capacity of various equipment

Defender of Democracy

• Shielding and turret cooldowns decreased
• Offensive strategem cooldowns increased
• Enemies are more likely to target you

These ideas are particularly not fleshed out, but its the kind of changes rather than the specifics that matter the most here.

Ship Module Category

A new category of modules themed around providing direct support to helldiver equipment

The first tier of this category is Hellpod Space Optimization, moving the booster to a module. This allows players to have more choice in their boosters loadout without feeling like there's a must-bring option.

Some ideas for other tiers of modules in this category:

• Helmet Upgraded Display (H.U.D.)
  • Non-intrusive additions showing grenade arcs
  • Maybe also fake lasers on more weapons
• Support Strategem Slot
  • One (1) Support Weapon can be brought without consuming a strategem slot
  • Yeah it's pretty breaking but I think there's potential for more diverse play and more fun!

Enemy Armor Shredding

Currently, light arms can feel useless on higher difficulties, as you are swarmed with armored enemies that brush off your gunfire as if you only spit on them (while getting about as enraged as if you spit on them). Weapons have an armor penetration value assigned to them, and unless you're shooting something that has a lower armor value than your weapon's penetration value, you'll just be causing rounds to ricochet. The goal of this new(ish) mechanic involves bringing a bit more power against armored enemies for light arms.

Weapons can now do damage to armor (referred to as armor shredding).

Now, weapons can deal damage directly to the armor (without penetrating the armor). In general, weapons can damage armor that's a tier above their penetration value. As the armor takes damage, it required penetration drops, eventually exposing a weakpoint that any weapon can damage.

These changes aren't limited to primary / secondary weapons, and strategems can make use of them as well (similar to current!). The various brainstormed ideas discussed below will often utilize this feature.

Note: This actually already exists in the game, but is pretty limited in comparison. The proposal here is to expand the usability of armor destroying to more weapons, making all weapons feel useful to bring on any difficulty.

Weapon Niche Changes

Many, if not all, primary weapons can/should receive changes to fill the new niches created by the armor changes. There are a few weapons I'd like to call out specifically though, since it feels like there's some overlap in their current designs.

Dominator

• Shreds enemy armor at any range

In line with the enemy armor discussed above, this weapon now capitalizes on its power by tearing through all kinds of armor. Once the armor is gone however, it's not as good at eating through the softer stuff.

Diligence

• Weak spot exploiter

While less good than the Dominator at shredding armor, the Diligence excels at damaging weak points- both those occurring naturally and those created by the armor shredding. The Counter-Sniper/CS variant takes this to the extreme, nearly zeroing out armor shredding potential, but maximizing weak point damage.

Anti-Materiel Rifle

• Armor & Heavy Enemy Deleter

Like the (new) Dominator, but a bit slower fire rate and more power. It's position as a Strategem-based support weapon also allows it to do significant damage to the weak points created by the armor shredding.

Slugger

• CQB Precision-aimed Destroyer

Changed to not just be a worse (current) Dominator, now absolutely annihilates enemies... but only up close. Due to the size and shape of the projectile, it slows down rapidly in the atmosphere, doing not much at all when at a long / medium range. It can shred armor, but considering it's fire rate it might not be the best idea.

Other Primaries

Section added 08 August 2024

I don't plan on listing every weapon in this section, just those that I think could use some more specific, targetted changes under the armor shredding system. However, I do think that most light arms (including almost every primary) feel pretty bad against majority heavily armored enemies common on higher difficulties (I almost exclusively play on 7 or 9). Therefore, just because a weapon isn't listed here doesn't mean I don't think it needs changes.

In particular, I'd like to see light / no armor penetrating weapons have much better ammo economy (capacity + resupply), as well as being able to assist higher penetration weapons. Perhaps a system where shooting an enemy's armor, even with light penetration, softens up the armor for more easily being shredded would work. That way, if multiple light penetrating weapons are firing at the same heavily armored target it can eventually be taken down. This incentives working & sticking together, team coordination, and weapon diversity on high difficulties.

Throwing Knife

• Guaranteed (but slightly delayed) kill when striking weak points

Enhanced with Super Venom from Super Earth, when placed precisely within a communist's squishy bits, causes immediate malfunction to vital systems. Death follows soon after.

Grenades are pretty strong, particularly against groups of weaker enemies. This attempts to bring the Throwing Knife into relevance by allowing it to focus on larger, more heavily armored enemies despite occupying the grenade slot.

• Note: (Super Venom - get it? - Viper Commandos? - get it? - Vipers have venom? - get it? - lol...?)

Impact Stun Grenade

Technically a new weapon, an impact variant of the stun grenade. Has a lower stun duration to compensate for the quicker activation.

Strategem Changes

Orbital vs Eagle

While I believe orbital strategems are fun to play, they also still feel a bit weak, even after the buffs, compared to Eagle strategems with their ability to rapidly deploy them and take their cooldown during periods of less intense activity.

I think the design of more power with higher intervals between call-ins is good, just need to alter some parameters slightly for the most part.

Orbital Airburst Strike

My concept for the airburst strike is wide-area, but lighter, damage:

The whole radius of the airburst gets hit (rather than pockets of high damage and pockets of none). Enemies without armor have a chance for a critical hit, killing them. This maintains the 'dispersing the crowd' aspect of the Airburst without just outright killing all the enemies. Armored enemies have their armor shredded, rendering them susceptible to small arms fire. It'd probably only have one shot when its designed like this, but eh, I'm not the implementor, idk.

Orbital Barrage (120mm / 380mm / Walking)

Some general ideas to differentiate the orbital barrages here:

For the 120mm Barrage, further shrinking the radius in comparison to the 380mm barrage would be good. That way, it can better fill its role of taking concentrated enemies.

Update 08 August 2024: the cooldown was reduced! It feels better now, though I still wish the radius was smaller.

The 380mm barrage is quite powerful, especially considering its ability to take out objective buildings. Its current parameters, I think, are fine.

The Walking Barrage, on the other hand, feels... not great. It uses the same shells as the 380mm, but fires fewer of them. Granted, you get to aim it a bit better, but its still not very accurate (they can even spawn behind the beacon, killing you if you don't throw it far enough ._.). My idea for the walking barrage has it reimagined as a shorter-lived but more accurate series of strikes. Each shot has a good (but not perfect) targeting such that the heaviest enemies in its area are hit the most. The size of the shell is maintained, but because there are fewer of them, they're much more likely to take out the enemies you need it to.

Update 08 August 2024: more salvos added to the barrage improve its usefulness as a tool to assist an advance. It's better, but I still think the above applies.

Orbital Laser

Currently, the laser feels like it ends up being wasted on larger, heavily armored enemies, while ignoring what it's best at - incinerating groups of smaller enemies / buildings. To remedy this, I propose having the laser focus down smaller enemies first. When it runs out of little guys to chew on, focus on destroying the buildings / spawners in an area.

Also having a limit of 3 feels too tight currently (though with the proposal above it might be fine).

Tesla Tower

Tesla tower excels at area-denial, but feels weak. I feel its current design can stay, but if a stun or slowing effect was added to its hits, even for huge enemies, and maybe increase the damage a bit, it'd be great.

Mines

It's no secret mines are forgotten about (how many Major Orders does it take to get access to Anti-Tank Mines? The world may never know...). Update: we got them :P They're good for holding a point, but they don't last long enough, and honestly, holding a point doesn't happen very often outside of a few mission types.

My solution to this is to keep the mine dispenser active (and make it stronger). Now, when mines are detonated, the dispenser replaces them, keeping the strategem active for longer. With this, mines can truly excel at continually wreaking havoc on extended, or even multiple enemy waves. This puts them in a similar position as turrets, but more up close and personal.

Orbital / Eagle Smoke

These feel like the weakest strategems of the bunch. I've actually never seen anyone take them outside of a joke. I think this is because smoke as a whole is too weak. However, when paired with the ideas for smoke changes I discussed above, there's potential here, though I still think some buffs are necessary:

The Orbital Smoke Strike now covers a very large area affecting all enemies within with its deletrious effects. Unfortunately, this impacts Helldiver vision significantly, but some believe the reward to be worth the risk. This change necessitates a much higher cooldown.

The Eagle Smoke Strike now deploys a thicc wall of smoke (each smoke 'capsule' has an increased radius), perpendicular to its throwing angle. Enemies forced to make their way through come out the other side frazzled with the new smoke effects. Can be deployed several times between rearms.

New Strategems

Here are some moonshot ideas for new strategems!

Orbital Napalm Strike

Spreads long lasting fire over a large area (good bit larger than the Eagle Napalm Strike). Perfect for dealing with a hoard of weak enemies coming from a similar direction (but not necessarily a chokepoint).

Eagle Gas Strike

Similar to the Orbital Gas Strike, but precisely placed to cover a chokepoint. Like the Strafing Run, it's placed in a line in the direction you throw it, allowing good placement to cover enemies for longer.

Orbital Hellbomb

A powerful, single-use-per-mission strategem that drops a hellbomb on the strategem beacon. A fun oh-shit button (if you can avoid fumbling the strategem code!). The orbital response to the Eagle 500kg.

Loadout change strategem

Literally just lets you change your weapons in a mission.

It would need UI development, not sure how it'd look but this is a personal wish of mine.

Pelican Strategems

Have Pelican join the fight!

When Pelican delivers a mech suit, or when landed for extraction, it will shoot at nearby enemies with its autocannon-esque turret. In fact, there's a semi-exploit here where triggering Pelican to spawn during extract, then leaving the extraction radius will cause Pelican to hover, continuously shooting enemies nearby. Here I propose expanding this mechanic to a strategem!

Pelican provides aerial support, circling around the beacon for a limited time, shooting enemies with a variety of weapons. Each of the weapon types could be a unique strategem, or they could be combined in some way.

• Pelican Autocannons
• Pelican Gatlings
• Pelican Rockets

Conclusion

Helldivers 2 is a fun game. I like it! I like creating things for things I like. I also like imagining things. That's what I've done in this post. I want to reiterate that ideas are cheap and most of them are bad, including the ones I've put forth today. While I do think it'd be cool to have any of these integrated into the game, realistically like 2 people are going to read this post and I personally know both of them. I wrote this as an exercise in creativity, to express myself, and to further connect with media I enjoy. If you like it, great! If you don't, that's great too! I expressed myself and that's what matters :3.

Spill oil, Divers.