Summary
Last week, theHelldivers 2community banded together to protest against the recent and controversial nerfs byallowing the Automaton hordes to reach Super Earth. The idea was that it would box developer Arrowhead into coming up with a convincing narrative solution or, if the first game was any indication, cause the entire campaign to restart. Nothing happened.
The clankers are being pushed back, Curia is liberated, and Tarsh was successfully defended. As some players noticed, the capture speed of nearby planets seemed designed to guarantee a victory against the bots, even if only afractionof the playerbase was taking part, ensuring that Super Earth remains safe.
Reddit user UnoLav pointed out that at 22,000 players, the capture speed was 2.2 percent per hour, while at 10,000 players, it had somehow increased to 2.6 percent.
Enemy regen rate was also drastically lower than usual at just one percent an hour, so the victory wasn’t quite “automatic”. But unless the entire community, not missing one single player, agreed to hold off, the Automatons weren’t ever going to plant their boots on Super Earth soil.
There Probably Isn’t Anything Ready For Super Earth
There werea bunch of theories about whatmighthappen if we let the enemy take Super Earth. One theory was that we’d finally see urban warfare and fight on the streets of our homeworld until we took back the galaxy planet by planet, but the truth is that Arrowhead probably doesn’t have the gameplay nor assets ready for such a fight. Game master Joel likely has plans for a Super Earth confrontation much further down the line, so we need to be kept at bay, busy fighting elsewhere.
Some thought that the campaign would simply reset like with the first Helldivers, but that would be a major blow to the live service model of slowly unraveling content. Thanks to dataminers, we know thatArrowhead is busy preparing the Illuminate, a highly advanced third faction that will completely shake up the Galactic War. Going back to square one would be a major blow to these plans and likely see many players lose motivation to continue with the game.
But through this protest, the community has only highlighted how artificial the campaign really is. While there’s a game master pulling the strings, it’s not nearly as player reactive or fluid as aDungeons & Dragonscampaign—it can’t be. Where D&D is limited only by your imagination, meaning’Yes, and’is endlessly possible, Helldivers 2 is a triple-A shooter. You can’t just agree as a party to visit Super Earth and go there, the developer needs time to prepare.
Already, knowing about Joel demystified the story somewhat, but this entire fiasco has taken things a few steps further.
