Last week, proved so difficult that even experienced players couldn't complete them. This led many to assume the abnormal difficulty spike was either a bug or an intentional tipping of scales in the robots' favor by Arrowhead Games to challenge Super Earth's liberation streak.
Helldivers 2 medals: Where to claim more currency
Both scenarios are still on the table, but the latest Helldivers 2 patch, version 1.000.009, which reduced the difficulty of the "defend event." I managed to long enough to test out the patch and confirm the civilian extraction mission that gave our group trouble just a few days ago is now a cakewalk at lower difficulties.
Today's patch also includes updates on Arrowhead's ongoing firefight against its own popularity, as matchmaking and servers have buckled under the weight of hundreds of thousands of active players on PC and PlayStation. An issue that was breaking quickplay matchmaking on PC has been resolved, as well as a fix for black screens on startup and error 10002038.
While these issues associated with logging in are fixed, I wouldn't expect a sudden improvement in Helldivers 2's queues. At 1 PM Pacific today, I still can't play without waiting in line for 15-20 minutes. In an updated "known issues" list, Arrowhead says s will still be slow as active players exceed server capacity (recently capped at 450,000) and disconnects remain common.
If you're wondering why Helldivers 2's developers can't simply "add more servers" to address this issue, one game developer took to Twitter today to explain just how complicated and interdependent online games' infrastructure is.
Another notable bullet from this patch: armor attributes "do not currently function as intended," so it might not be worth slowing yourself down in heavy armor at the moment. It is still worth considering armor perks when picking the armor.
Patch 1.000.10 is out now on PC and PS5. Read the full patch notes below:
Fixes
- Fixed crash when replicating ragdoll momentum
- Fixed crash when replicating destructions
- Fixed crash when displaying the mission end rewards
- Resolved a 100% block issue for Quickplay matchmaking on PC
- Tuned extract civilian mission difficulty
- Improved the way that we handle platform authentication to avoid things like the black screen issue at startup
- Improvements to our client > backend communication for better backend performance
- Implemented an automatic retry mechanism to quickplay
- Added proper error message for error "10002038”
Known issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
- rate limiting when many are logging in at the same time
- Players can become disconnected during play
- Rewards and other progress may be delayed or not attributed
- Various UI issues may appear when the game interacts with servers
- Pick-up of certain objects in-game may cause characters to freeze in place for an extended period of time
- Other unknown behaviors may occur
- Japanese VO is missing from intro cutscene and Ship TV
- Armor values for light/medium/heavy armor do not currently function as intended
