Helldivers 2 dev announces Galactic War changes, more ships, and a new game mode

This spring, Helldivers 2 was — once again — the subject of an intense review bombing and community outcry. This was not because of some big change passed down from above, like the infamous review bomb in response to Sony’s requirement to log-in to an account before playing. Instead, small frustrations had built up and boiled over. On June 4, game director Mikael Eriksson released a blog called “Progressing Progression” that aims to tackle some of those long-standing player concerns.

Eriksson begins by defining “community progression” — the Galactic War and the stories around it — and “player progression”, which is the journey of levelling up as a Helldiver, unlocking new stratagems, and updating the Super Destroyer. 

When it comes to community progression, Eriksson says that there have been some highlights like unlocking the Exosuit, choosing to save the very sick children, or the initial Illuminate reveal on Calypso. "It's never been clear if the actions of the community actually lead to different outcomes, or if it's all just smoke and mirrors.The reality is that the community impact on the Galactic War differs, but even in the cases where we did a lot of work to prepare for very different outcomes, we've struggled to communicate it in the game.”So in June, we’re going to get a new format called Galactic War Campaigns — a sort of extended Major Order that lasts for 1-3 weeks, depending on the strategy, objectives, and lore. Campaigns will also grant special rewards upon completion, “ranging from gameplay altering effects to cool items,” with the first treat being a new FRV. While we can probably still expect Warbonds, they’ll no longer be the sole way to get new goodies.

In addition, Eriksson briefly discussed an upcoming roguelike mode called Planet Warfronts. Planet Warfronts will offer different groups of missions: defending liberated territory, frontline war for contested worlds, and missions behind enemy lines. Helldivers will have to fight their way to strategic locations, like cities, while dealing with different enemy variants, gameplay altering effects, and bonuses from achieving goals along the way. While the Galactic War campaigns are due to release in June, these seem a little further off, with “more to come on these changes in the next few months!”

Player progression is also seeing some changes, with Personal Orders turning from a simple daily goal, like killingBile Titans or using a specific weapon, into a system called Personal Campaign Progression, with a reward track full of “cool things.” We’ll likely learn more about this change soon, as the plan is to deploy the new system this year.

Finally, ship-lovers can rejoice, as the Super Destroyer is getting a bit of an overhaul. Players will be able to switch to a new ship, specialize their vessel, and customize the craft. There’s a whole team on Arrowhead now working on these ships, and we can expect “more details later this year.”

Eriksson promises some shorter-term, smaller changes as well: a fix to the irritating stratagem bouncing bug, tweaking Hellpod steering, smoothing out environmental collision, and increasing the level cap to 300.

This blog post isn’t a magic bullet; there are still plenty of players who have built up a head of steam and are demanding instant results. Between the new content coming, and the Warhammer Skulls announcement that we’ll be getting a 40K Warbond, we might just be on the cusp of the “We’re So Back!!!” phase of the eternal Helldivers 2 discourse cycle.