The main reason is how repetitive the recent major orders have been. We manage to take territory from the bugs, but then we have to go back to the bots to take back the territory they've taken, then we have to go back to the terminids because they have taken back all of the planets that we managed to take previously, that sums up all of the recent major orders. We need variety in the major orders, like the meridia black hole one. We could have a simillar mission that we had on meridia but in cyberstan instead. I just hope that the illuminate come to the game soon to bring more variety to the major orders and bring back the hype this game used to have

The problem is everyone has maxed out the grind already. A lot of people sit at max samples, requisition slips, and medals with nothing to spend them on. Titles are nice, but not enough to strive for. In game economy needs a revision.

Speaking as someone who loves this game, almost 125 hours, I need to say the reptative with no significant progress has been dissapointing. I remember when we fist defeated the bots! That was amazing! Our efforts changed the map. Destroying Meridia was amazing! But now... it's a war of attrition. We shall see how things go when the devs return from their state-sponsored vacations. I want Illuminates! I want new mechs! I want new biomes!

I’m pretty sure this is because of two main reasons: 1. Sony being stupid and making poor choices 2. The devs have been used to their games being small, which doesn’t translate well to how big helldivers had become.

somehow never had big motivation since the sony scandal , i was hyped af after "winning" over sony but they never changed the thing with 170 countrys so it was a bummer

I have about 500 hours in the game, give or take. The problem is they had a very simple formula on release and they did not follow it. Everyone loved the game, tons of players, maps and everything was super new. All they had to do was create content, fix some issues, and expand the story. They instead got a terrible balance lead that basically punched you in the face for having fun. The breaker and shield were a necessary nerf and all they had to do was buff weapons to get people to use other things. They instead… continued to nerf everything, Didnt release any new biomes or content, and somehow managed to break more of the game. In the entire first month of the game I crashed one time. 5 months later I crash about 3-4 times a day counting the forced closing I had to do being stuck in the loading screen. Reinforcements sometimes don’t work ever, missions will stop working so we can’t complete them, and we only just got the spear fix despite it being done for 2 months and it took them 2 attempts to fix because they broke it the first time. It was a very simple formula that any other game dev team would have drooled over. Servers full, good will from a community that was patient with you, people giving you idea after idea for content they would like to see. And none of it got done.

I’m not sure if these solutions are possible, but I think if they add: 1. Urban planetary environments with cities and suburbs 2. New vehicles that were leaked like the APC. 3. A boss raid of some sort where fire teams can go up to 8 helldivers but the objectives become much more difficult ( something like destiny 2) 4. More linear level missions where you’re in confined spaces. Like for example taking back an overan base from the terminids. Or infiltrating an automotan central fabrication base and detonating it. Perhaps making it like black ops missions where reinforcements are very limited. I think these varieties in game play would lead to the game feeling more open and less repetitive.

Allow us to purchase attachments that improve weapons.... vehicles for traversing the planets.... and fix the bugs, really awesome game none the less. Missions would be welcome as well

the main reason: the game is only half-baked and players are tired of waiting

Add some raids. Have a terminid hive system you go down in to and do various little tasks. Fight a massive terminid boss at the end! Get unique weapons or armour as a reward.

I see 100k players on during the weekends… I don’t think the game is “dead”, definitely lost traction though. Im sure the illuminate will bring in a good amount of people

I bet the team is still grateful this game gotten this big the way it did, now they should have less pressure on their shoulders and I’ll try to stick with them :)

Its too repetitive. No story . No end game. Basic cosmetics. All my friends have forgotten anout Hd2 i cant blame them.

Nothing to do once you unlock everything

Crazy how pissing off your playerbase with unliked balance changes, underwhelming warbond weapons, new and reintroduced old bugs, unprofessional community managers and mods, psn linking debacle, pulling sales, no progression, and repetitive missions kill a live service game. Arrowhead and Sony seem hellbent on destroying this game.

I STILL enjoy just killing bugs/robots and trying out different loadouts, i do get how most people are bored but I'm still loving administering freedom.

Here's why I'm not playing right now. I went to go sign in today and joined a random lobby. Good group, we were doing well and the map was almost fully cleared w/super samples in hand. I died for the first time that match and my team tried to respawn me. They tried and tried and tried and tried again, but I was glitched. Couldn't respawn at all. This is a known bug and has been a known bug for a while. If I can't play the game, I'm not going to try to play the game

They should honestly be a community suggestion board where we can all put ideas and throw things at the wall and the devs can see what sticks Because there's so many great communities suggestions that sound awesome but at the same time you don't want to make it seem like we know it all as this is still arrowhead's vision but I think there are very great suggestions coming from the community on things to add and they just need the developers to put things in I've been taking a break as of recent myself and level 115 Just give the time some game to grow and give Arrowhead some time to cook I have a feeling come the winter it will be much better

260 hours, Level 129 here. My ONLY gripe with the game is sheer lack of Endgame content. Sure other things need work, but there's no point in waiting for bug fixes if there is straight up no content.

Mostly, for me, it was the eruptor nerf, and Elden Ring DLC being released and taking my time enjoying a game with lore, story, and depth. I'll reenlist when I'm finished, and hope that there are new things to enjoy in HD2.

I can honestly say i havent played since the psn drama, the fact that the people who bought the game in countries that dont have psn and then 2-3 months later they said hey yall can no longer play because sony just doesnt sit right with me, why even sell it in those countries to begin with if they “intended to have psn linked from the start”

This happens with literally every game, initial novelty wares off Examples for % concurrent players lost: lethal company: 92% The finals: 93.5 battlebit: 95% palworld: 94% Valheim: 93% phasmophobia: 75%

The nerfs made the game a chore to play for me and my mates. It was fun, then it wasn't and from what i've seen, probably still isn't. The one thing that's sad to see is how the community devolved from wholesome to a cod lobby. Even if the game had an amazing story, great end game or a million cosmetics if the process is not fun people won't bother.

After initial all day gaming at launch I'm now treating it like I did the first game. Boot it up maybe once a day, get a 3 mission campaign done, do the daily objective and then play/do something else.

The issue with diverse objective types is that there is only a limited number of things that can reasonably be done with the game’s premise. You can’t call in support or ammo while underground, maybe in a building if it breaks through the celling. Now, it the bunker was a sub objective or main objective where you could call in supplies at certain points, ie. The entrance, sniper holes, launch bays, etc. that would make the game interesting, but only if the bunkers were dynamically generated as otherwise certain patterns would become standard and thus boring. A ship would just be like the bunker, or, if the ship moved, could be like a massive boss fight where getting up to it, or taking down a massive drop ship from the ground could be interesting. There are only so many things that can be made. People get used to environments, especially games they play a lot. And what people are used to gets boring. It is the nature of human psychology. In my opinion, from a psychological view, the best approach for the game to take is to lean heavily into emergent gameplay. Complex series of systems combine to create unforeseen events. Like maybe a dynamic labyrinth map, where the walls move and acts as a big kill cage made by the automatons. Or caves and cliff faces with wall and ceiling climbing bugs that can leap down on you after screeching. Maybe the airships get varieties, and as you mow down one type a different type shows up, or different collections of types as patrols or reinforcements. Air ship reinforcements. The issue is it takes a lot of time to make the systems, especially the ones that are random and interact with one another. I certainly think different bug breach or not drop processes could do well. I mean like ground assault vehicles for the bots instead of airships. Or massive breaches given specific circumstances. Maybe breaches could just keep pushing swarms and swarms until you leave the area? Maybe boss objectives where the boss can do a whole lot? Like a whole map where you hide from a huge automaton that seeks out you anywhere on the map. Or a big bug that spews bugs like a queen. A flying bastion where you need to take it out with prepositioned artillery pieces from a huge gun firing mini nukes. Would any of these work? I don’t know. That’s the issue. They are probably being conservative to not mess up the game, and in doing so hurting the game by not being liberal enough. There is a theme, and a feel, and those two thinks make or kill a game. Just my two cents.

Sty, going into the underground hive sounds cool, but it makes no sense to have any indoor type of maps, gameplay-wise. None of the strategems would activate & reach the location with a roof over the head.

Patrols/spawns are still broken as of playing last Thursday, feels horrible to have to use every primary and secondary mag, grenade, all my eagles, just to clear out a single medium or large bug nest because of broken spawns that just keep adding more and more patrols. Shriekers are annoying as well, but they don't instantly kill you like before, so I'm fine with their patrols for the most part. Bots aren't nearly as bad (mainly because their numbers in bot drops/patrols are smaller), but they still have times where you get an unending swarm of them. They also either nerfed impact grenades or buff spewers, the explosion damage reduction on strikers made impacts, and the auto-cannon feel horrible. Can first twice at a hulks head and drop it. There is a chance I need 3 auto-cannon shots at the face plate of the strider. Just the game doesn't feel good to play anymore and hasn't for a while now. I'll keep trying after each patch, but they had a good difficulty balance, and they should have looked at either adding more difficulties or adding optional modifiers we could toggle.

I have like 433 hours in the game, but have been playing it less recently, just cuz Ive been trying other games out and I kinda wanna see more big events like the Meridia Super Colony or new stratagems. The balance patch has definitely freshened things up a bit tho, if they keep that up Ill definetly come back more often

Pre-launch expectation was 10K concurrent players. Compared to that not bad. Thing with the game is that after maybe 40 hours you have experienced pretty much everything you can.

I plan to keep playing but I like playing other games too, just need a small break.

I haven’t been playing religiously as I was at launch but I’m still playing with my mates once a week at least, in my mind this is a game I’ll keep coming back to because it is just casual fun.

Also I want to say even if game would be dead, I had the fun. And games could be revived if did some cool news things. The whole issue, is that Arrowhead mostly likely they did not have plan for long-term. Especially with the sales they got. And completely fine to play others games while arrowhead working on new content.

I got killed by an invisible bile titan one time. My buddy called me down right on top of its head so I could get my revenge, before I even got out of my pod the corpse of the titan fell on me and killed me. I haven’t looked back since.

It's just a game you play for a while, they even said that.

My dream for this game would be an update that brings the following at the SAME time: - The Illuminate (Very likely to bring people back all on its own) - The review-bomb cape (My guess is it will be paired with the Illuminate) - Lifting the region restrictions (Would be the most poetic thing to do while adding the cape, but no guarantee that'll actually happen) - An end-game/prestige system to dump samples and requisition into in the absence of ship modules to purchase (A personal wish, but unlikely) My theory is that if all of these things occurred at the EXACT same time, the game would absolutely explode again, doubly so if a new warbond or stratagem was thrown in, too. This is a game all about community. If the Devs bring in the Illuminate AND convince Sony to lift the region restrictions at the same time, wrapping it all up in the review bomb cape? I can scarcely imagine the communal shockwave that would occur from something like that!

When the hell did it become a thing in gaming that for a game to not "fail" it has to have crazy high player counts months after release.

Personally, Deep Rock Galactic season 5 came out, and I have been playing that, and realized DRG has a better endgame progression, unlocking rare Overclocks that can dramatically change the way weapons work. I have also unlocked everything in Helldivers, so I no longer have a motivation to play the game.

Here are some of the reasons I'm still playing the game 1. The want to 100% it and get every weapon, armor, etc 2. Having fun with friends 3. Wanting to help with the MOs And 4. I just still have lots of fun playing the game

Honestly there should be a mission type where you can explore bug caves fighting bugs and destroying like the queen or something and or exploring mech super bases or even their ships it would be so cool. We should also Have city biomes you have all these cities on these planets but we never see them it’s always the same maps and it gets so bland. The repetition is crazy we need vehicles as well to traverse and some actual bug and bot busting weapons that feel so good and you get the really cool vibe of feeling how it is to destroy everything around you. Like music would play in my head as I bust some bug buts lol

The reason the game lost its playerbase is because SONY FUCKED UP!!! It’s not dying because it has low content, it’s because Sony banned over 200 countries from playing, so that stopped a ton of players from playing, and Steam managed to refund a lot of those, and once we seen that debacle, the active Helldivers 2 went from 350k active divers that were playing for 3 months straight, even without a story, but after they tried to force Sony accounts to play, and also banned out 200+ countries, that’s what brought it down to 100k at most, and now goes down to 30k active divers, you can trust me who has been around since February, it is still a great game to play. EDIT: Another thing to add, lets not forget that Helldivers 2, and Arrowhead overall did not expect to see such a huge success right out the gate with this game, they were expecting to see 30k-40k playerbase, they prepared for such a small amount, only to see that everyone was in on loving this game, and having 300k+ players active all at once rather than throughout the entire day wasn't something Arrowhead servers were prepared for, so we've all seen those videos of players waiting, the posts trashing on having to wait an hour to play or longer, to which they've fixed a lot of, and even Opera GX was willing to help with any server issues that Arrowhead was facing at first. Overall, Arrowhead was and has been doing great for player support, communicating a lot of things, the main thing they fucked up on is gun balancing WAY too hard, and then Sony really didn't help with their bullshit that they implemented, then seeing them go all petty with banning any countries with players who legally couldn't sign up for PSN accounts, even after they reversed their decision to making it a mandatory thing, so they just lost out on hundreds of thousands of players

My game would constantly keep crashing. I’d make sure all my drivers were updated and everything but nothing would help it so despite how much i like the game i am simply unable to play it.

This was bound to happen sooner or later. There was no way the noob stoggaf were going to be able to handle the Illuminate anyway since they can't even handle the automatons...

Great thoughts, I do see that the Galactic Map relies on player count and at a certain point it would become unplayable as the values for liberation and decay are largely set in stone, and AH would need to accept that the daily liberation cap would have to be lifted and the aforementioned values tweaked to change in accordance with player count to avoid it becoming too hard to liberate and especially defend. I actually see a lot of people say the game is too hard, especially with Bots XD But it is manageable with practise and teamwork so some higher difficulties will be appreciated. And yes the longer people get to talk ideas the bigger they will become and the more they will insist, this is a live service game and such a big smash hit on release so they absolutely should throw their all in and add big ideas, people just have to remember that this is a very small team of 100 or so people that brought us smaller titles like Magika, so it will take time. A classic campaign like the first game that rewards you with limited-use bonuses to take into the main Galactic War would be nice, plus some upgrades that require a new non-premium resource that is added to the main game will give something new to players and also encourage them to return to the main fight. Also mission on ships and in bunkers would be great! You could even chain those with a ground mission into a three-part Super Mission that plays concurrently when planets becomes available to liberate, with bigger risks and rewards, it would work just like Deep Rock Galactic's Deep Dives and give us the kinds of missions that Star Wars Battlefront players could only dream of! At least I don't think we ever got a mission like that Ultimately it's down to what AH chooses to do that keeps people coming back or not, it's not fair to expect half a million players again but bigger additions like that will help. Only time will tell!

I'm curious on the actual log in numbers. How many just in do a quick mission or 2 and finish their daily and then log out.

I love helldivers, there is just no reason for me to play...

i lost intress because of the stupid railgun nerf- then the breaker - i never found a weapon where i enjoyed the game

love this game its so much fun. ppl have Burt themselves out and that's just how it goes. I'm stoked for future content i have 470+ hours and i hope to play more.

TLDR: 1. Poor development prioritization. 2. Community managers that hate their community. 3. PSN lockout debacle. 4. endgame grind? 1. Devs focused on balance patching (nerfing) a PvE game for months, while adding aggravating stealth changes, all while finding new things to break in the process, instead of fixing major foundational issues and adding new FUN content. How many times have you heard, not to talk about something being good because the fun police would nerf it? Even when they did create something new, it's usually broken on arrival and/or breaks something else. Examples? Mech was amazing, but one shot yourself if you fired a rocket while turning. They fixed the bug, but messed up the aiming and nerfed its usefulness to oblivion by comparison. Airburst launcher blew up in your face every time you would use it. Some new ship upgrades are still broken to this day, ect. How long was it for them to fix the damn scopes on weapons? Or the host DOT effects? Or the PS5 host damage bug? Meanwhile, players are going through this crazy development resource hell, while the things they like to use get nerfed into the dirt CONSTANTLY, and they add, I kid you not, stealth changes like enemies moving faster when you're not looking at them. It's downright annoying. To their credit, recent changes have been a lot better to restore the health of balance, but it's too little too late. We're back in the state of the "brainless" railgun meta but instead it's the flamethrower. Which leads me to my next point... 2. Even if you survived all of the crap going on in part 1, you probably saw all the drama with the terrible things the Devs said about their own player base. This "childish" behavior essentially tore at the community... When the game first came out it was, leave no helldiver behind! Suddenly this weird, "get good" culture came out of the woodwork. The people that want a video game to be hard just to stroke their pathetic egos instead of the game being fun for all, were suddenly validated as the community managers lashed out repeatedly at their own player base for raising valid concerns. At this point, a lot of people hate the direction The game is going. The fun they had was being sucked away with "balance" changes. The terrible community managers actively don't like you, and the community itself is full of people that suck their farts for a living to inflate their ego while calling you bad at the game... If you've managed to survive thus far: 3 The PSN lockout debacle. Not much to say here that hasn't already been said. Truth be told, the Steam numbers around this time plateaued. It simply was/is another reason for people to never click that desktop icon again. 4. So now you're playing Deep Rock Galactic or Monster Hunter, or Destiny 2 or whatever. You have a reason to sink thousands of hours into the game. You watch videos like this casually from the sideline, hoping that one day Helldivers 2 would be as good as it was, build 0, when the only thing you had to worry about was logging in for 15 minutes... You get a cynical yet wise chuckle from seeing trailers for the next warbond, then seeing that most things in them are broken a few days later. Hell, maybe the trailer pulls you back in and you try the game, only to realize that it's still an arcady mess compared to the games you have reason to sink thousands of hours into. The tools available to the player seem janky/broken and insufficient at endgame difficulty compared to those other games, and there really isn't an incentive to play because most of your friends didn't survive until this point... You are now in the 90%... It's not your fault. I miss a lot of you, fellow Helldivers.

Won't this all change when they add the Illuminate? A little premature for all these doomposts.

There is quite literally no end-game. You can play just for the sake of playing, which is fine for some, but not for most. Very quickly you stop getting stronger, the cosmetics are meh, every new warbond has this aura of "is it actually worth it? Or is it broken and/or nerfed to the point where it's unusable". Not to say anything about constant struggles with optimisation and metric hellton of crashes. It's just much easier to grab a bunch of my buddies and play a game that works and/or has any sense of progression.

I guess it just has to do with how the gameplay is made to be. Game rewards being meta and cheesing crowds. Imagine if it took fort building like Starship Troopers or was map immersive like Planetside 2 where you can see where ground is lost and where the front line is instead of a simple 0-100% bar. Also could be more mech focused like EDF. The game is good, but imagine being able to dive to important holds with more than a team of Helldivers and defending from impending hordes from breaking through. Just thoughts

12M was their figure pre PSN issue, I don't think Sony has the stones to look at the number after that whole mess

I'd like to offer an alternate take that might just be a skill issue, but I and my friends have actually found this game too difficult. We can't really push into higher difficulties at all and that's one reason why I struggle to want to come back.

I stopped after the PlayStation account business, and kinda just never came back. Not enough variety in scenario. It just gets old to use the same stratagems same armor perks same weapons over and over and over again against the same enemies. The storyline needs to be more active, and more involved. There needs to be far more opportunity for individual impact. It feels weird going through an hour long mission just to see that progress bar go up like 0.001%. Why should I do that again? It was fun for a while but nothing I do impacts the story in any significant way, which gives me very little desire to see it develop further. I don’t think I should have to grind for hours on end to feel like I did something for the current cause. It needs to feel like an actual military briefing, not just weekly quests.

I feel like HellDivers 2 is to worried with content to fight with and not content that they teased many times but we haven't seen anything of it yet, except for shriekers, but they teased hive lords so many times and all we still see is the exoskeletons on maps, it like they are giving us content, but its not content that keep us hooked, its like fish, you want more fish you need a good bait. And i still wish they would bring vehicles, but instead they gave us two chances to get anti tank mines

I still love this game. My biggest gripes with it are: 1. Sony fiasco was no bueno... 2. (*SIREN* FUN DETECTED) - The stupid balance decisions which force players into "meta" type builds. I like to try different stratagems, but some are just really really baaaaad. Main weapons tend to suck and I didn't see the point of even using main and secondary weapons. Why worry about "balance" anyway when there are game crashing bugs that should be prioritized. Nah, too many people are using this weapon and we need to adjust it... 3. Lack luster and pathetic warbonds. 4. Shitty interactions from Community Mangers and Dev team. You must remain professional. You MUST remain professional. They should fire any of the people that cannot handle that. 5. The biggest issue of all are the bugs and crashes. My friend and I get disconnected or crash literally half of the games we play. Also, there's a bunch of bugs around ship module upgrades and its a crap shoot if they are working or not. I know they are a small team... I know they weren't expecting the success... This excuse cannot be used forever... They got some massive sales and they need to use newly acquired money to quickly resolve these problems.

Kinda never got over the whole “170 countries still banned from the game” thing. To my knowledge it’s still like that

I lost interest after the handling of the original balance issues with the railgun nerfing and the handling of armoured enemies the devs response was a massive red flag. The whole PSN account mess made me fully stop playing and I just haven't felt the urge to play since.

I think you nailed it by saying it’s too easy, in part it’s because almost all players left are veterans and so you drop and everyone knows what to do, so it feels too streamlined. The way I have keep playing it’s because the core game it’s fun and gameplay wise it’s in the best state so far, so I am mixing stratagems and weapons to keep it fresh. But, as you mentioned new maps give u a different feel and the terrain can definitely influence how we play, but that can only go so far. I would like if they just extend the immersion of some of these planets and missions, I don’t think they need to go super complicated, imagine a mission where all helldivers have to ride a train, load cargo from on point to another and have wave of bugs follow you as the train goes. This would keep the game on the surface, but add some spice to it. Likewise, this spots where cargo is we have safe settlements where there are citizens and defense systems in place, so that it feels alive. My biggest gripe it’s that for all the cool interactions, physics, biomes, enemy behavior, the places we ‘liberated’, ‘defend’ and feel as dead as always. For instance a current mission type, the transport fuel would be awesome if a helldiver gets to fly the pelican and drop the fuel at another location, they could make it some one drive and the other shoots shriekers. Kinda of like weapon balancing or rework they could totally rework the mission. The constant go here and drop strategem mission just don’t feel fresh anymore unless the strategem it’s actually something that gets to change the gameplay. Why not have bases that repairs your mech repair and reloads it. Like the mech get lots of hype, but it dies fast due to how poorly the mech are implemented. Like HD2 is the only game we’re mechs are a turn off and that’s a problem if they want to rely on weapon content to entice players to come back or new players to come. I am sure the game will only get better, but by how much it’s matter of AH to look hard at what it’s turning players away and it’s not the balance of primary and secondary weapons. Also they got to fix crashes HD2 is also the only game I play where I launch and take like 5 to 10 min to start a mission because of the crashes, it’s not all the time but with so many games out there and people with no time to waste, AH can not have a live game to take that long.

Bugs, Crashes, and everyone is just maxed out. No other way to spend resources on. Suggestions? Fix the bugs and crashes Be able to donate resources to a war effort through community voted assets that will be available to everyone. But can't wait for the illuminate too.

Another flavor-of-the-month game for 2024. Battlebit, Palworld, Helldivers, Content Warning, etc

Nerfs + no progression + shitty discord mods made me not want to play anymore. Waiting for the next games.

Personally, for me it's a few things.. 1) Sony's poor decision making. 2) Devs weren't prepared for the success of Helldivers (Which is understandable) but we're now several months in and I feel like their still not adapting. 3) Helldiver difficulty isn't actually as hard as people think, which when you've maxed out on everything.. doesn't really leave anything else to do. 4) Maps all feel kind of barren and have a weird sense of similarity to them. 5) The constant stealth nerfs.. actually all of the balancing has felt really off. It's like they give from one hand but take twice as much from the other. 6) Mission variations are... limited at best. 7) I really enjoyed the galactic war stuff at the start, but over time it seems as if they've gotten a bit repetitive. 8) Warbonds in the nicest way possible, have sucked since release. Hardly any (If any) new armor stats, weapon stats or anything. 9) The gameplay loop is just so repetitive.. Don't get me wrong, I love the game because at times it's just pure chaos. When I first got into Helldivers, I remember thinking it was an insane game.. but it's starting to feel as if AH are either losing passion for the game or they've got Sony directing them down a specific path for the game.

Don’t forget the major single player game releases like Elden Ring DLC and Hades 2, so people might come back after they’ve experienced new games if given a chance

1. Sony's dick move about PSN requirement 2. Sony's 2nd dick move of de-listing the game from steam in all the countries that are not allowed to have PSN accounts - AFTER walking back the PSN requierement. A huge chunk of that 90% drop is in those 177 countries. Part of me feels this was Sony's plan all along because they didn't think Helldivers 2 would be so well received on launch. I'm guessing they want to sacrifice HD2 in order to hype up their next release, which is the new Starship Troopers game.

But remember that some people who can't come back to the game because it was delisted from Steam pages in regions without PSN and the people who deleted and refunded the game then can't go back and buy it

The problem is that when they add more stuff more bugs appear I know patches exist but they arent that much effective But I hope they find a solution cuz this game itself is absolute perfection

I think a problem is that the dev team lacks the technical skills to implement all those cool ideas, seeing as how buggy every patch is.

I'm not sure about other people but I refuse to play while the game is unoptimized. I can play other games that look way better and is cpu bound like Helldivers 2 but with like 50% more fps and better frametimes.

I don't think the devs have enough time to play the game to get good enough to properly balance higher difficulties

The nerf of the rail gun and the breaker. This kind of kill it for me. Ongoing balance changes in very short time do the rest. Imagine you have a cake receipt. You constantly change your get a some point it begins to taste like trash.

I dont play 8 and 9, but in my opinion releasing one more difficulty every few months, until they reach 15 would bring some players back, but difficulty should bring something new, not only enemy spam and heavy spam. Something like harder to achive objectives, or maybe even raids, like going into a terminid nest and having a terminid overlord as the boss, but something to mantain good players engaged, and have casual players looking to get good enough to play those harder missions.

1. Lack of End Game/Longer Progression 2. Terrible PR with Community Managers and Sony decision 3. Terrible balance updates that are making the game less fun. They nerf our few options at high levels only to NOT give us any alternatives through buffs. Need to fix weapons that dont work as intended. "Just use strategems" is the dev response to nerfing our only good endgame support weapon, the Railgun(before Quasar), when if they actually played Helldive they'd know the effects often make it ~4-7min long between each use and one patrol can have 3 Hulks. They are over balancing certain weapons and neglecting others. Sometimes they eventually get an ok balance with a weapon but, there are too many strategems and weapons that are essentially 'useless' or objectively worse versions of another strat or weap. The worst part is the timing, if you do play frequently, you suffer for it by having unplayable balance of enemies overspawning or broken weapons making you just not want to play till the update fix. 4. I do agree the game can be too easy. I know I was just raving about balance but, that is more of a fun gameplay loop, I still complete the mission but, I had more fun and still took the same amount of time when I had strong weapons and there were rapidly spawning enemies. Now it feels like there is less enemies and I have weaker weapons, its less intense now, less constant, fast, action and more just sneaking or little firefights. The game becomes too easy because its too systematically the same, its repetitive, with repetition you improve and it gets easier until you master it.

Even after losing 90%, 40.000 players is still more than most games get after 5 months, even AAA titles.

Pretty sure Sony was a big part of the player base losses (along with Steam not removing the restriction!)

The entire game should be free to play as they sell premium currency that buys not just cosmetic items but weapons and armor, the menus are riddled with console quirks making it a chore to use with mouse and keyboard, every new patch makes the game feel like early access, there are still common game breaking bugs and sony hates gamers

People have hundreds of games in their steam library, so many of them don't feel committed unless it's very addictive. They just have their fill of fun and move on.

Big punch in a gut for me was when we defeated bots for like 1 day. Joel f-ed up imo with this one. When you’re a GM you think about combining your story with fun for players. Not pushing your narrative into their throats

They need to start implementing something to do once you've unlocked all stratagems and ships modules, maybe use those currencies for temporary (one mission or one operation) powerful boosters and stratagems maybe ? But difficulty would need to be increased (or have harder difficulty levels) for those to not throw the balance out of wack. The major orders need to have more of an impact on the story, more than ''deliver x number of bug planets'' this week then shift to ''deliver x number of bots planets'' the next. And yeah, too many planets are unpleasant to play on. Especially those with low visibility

PSN drama and Nerfing of Weapons really fucked up the Player numbers.... Some of my folks here won't even believe me that some of the weapons that have been nerfed have been buffed again. They don't have the energy to play this game anymore.

what i feel is a huge part of the fall off, if you can even call it that, is kind of the familiarity you get after the initial discovery phase wears off. you start to see the lazy shortcuts and not very well thought out or tested mechanics, the longer you play, the more you see that what you once thought was good was actually not good and actually incredibly shallow and low effort. pulling back, or seeing behind the curtain as it were. the thing with HD2 is that almost everything in the game suffers from this at some point. enemies, objectives, weapons, maps, its like you thought you were in wonderland, but you take a few steps in any direction and realize everything is actually just cardboard cutouts. like for instance, the fire tornadoes were pissing everyone off because they "felt" like they were actively screwing you over, and then AH comes out and says they made a fix for tornadoes because they were seeking out players too well. like the fact that tornadoes react to the actions of humans didnt already set off red flags in their heads that it makes no sense. the same thing for supply lines. the whole galactic map seems like a really cool and novel idea, but seeing them drag their feet on implementing an ingame one (thats underwhelming for how much time they took to add it in), and add on to it, the fact that it really demonstrates how useless and ineffective any of this really is, as hokmeworlds are blocked off and enemies can jump across supply lines. not only are the actions of one or a few people irrelevant because of how the regen system for planets work, but you also arent accomplishing anything that will hinder the enemy in any way, even if you do take a planet. and the list goes on with things like forcing ricochets to aim at players, the still terrible and broken animations for chargers (among other enemies), the patrol spawn mechanic in general, making weapons that crash games, bugs like not being able to reinforce and objectives being frozen and unable to be completed, im sure there are more, but any of these would be a death sentence for most games, i think the only thing keeping hd2 from that is the sheer popularity and word of mouth, people are willing to look past the glaring issues because they heard its a good game, but eventually they get fed up and move to something else that values their time more. on the other hand, and on a more positive note, these are still good numbers, and even just 100k concurrent players means a lot more than youd think, youre not getting 100k people playing 24/7, there are probably 800k to 1.6 mil that might play for an hour or two everyday to get those numbers.

i think they should lift the band on those countries, allow more people to have access to purchase and play I'm lucky to have purchased before my country was banned, steam still allows me to play but i can't get my friends onboard :(

I think after their summer break, they'll be back on track with big content. It did only release this year. I think a lot of people are used to constant updates and big ones at that, every month. Although, they probably would have a lot more stuff out and new things/ planets to play if they didn't have to do that huge fix to the nerfs that happened. We'll have too see what they bring.

People have been trained by every other game on the market to grind. Grind for this or that... progression or level grinding or something. So now if its not a grind clone like all these PvP games to dump 1000s of hours to unlock something With that being said obviously the game needs new content. Idk if it needs more grindable shit... but new stuff like you were talking about. New mission types new biomes new enemies new objectives new side objectives new weapons new stratagems. The problem is theyre stretching things out to last for years but if they let things die waiting for "the right time" what good will it do?

I'm pretty use to the summer breaks taken in Sweden as I am an avid Battlefield fan. However I wager what's left of the player base isn't. It is a hard pill to swallow to have updates slow down (especially with massive glitches in the game currently) and then not see a single hot fix for over a month. Plus a slow on all content. We also have the looming effects of the Sony debacle still occurring with dozens of countries not allowed to play the game. Hopefully the illuminate can come in and shake everything up

I have all my ship modules maxed out and I'm not playing for the warbonds perse... I play to experience the game and it's real time progressing storry that gets presented to us in the form of major orders... To influence what will happen in the game as a player, I think that's a cool concept. I'm at level 77 right now and I have great fun just playing the game with my friends Most of the time ( now that I need no more super samples and you can get them on 6) I just chill out on difficulty 5 or 6 or help people out on dif. 4... I'm not good enough to play 8 or 9 in any way that is fun to me so I just don't do that

When this game came out day one there was no balance issues,it was fun,every gun looked like it did the same damage,then the big KZfaqrs started playing,KZfaqrs who play alone usually to maxmise income,but in this game you beed to work together,its even an overlooked mechanic in the game where you help a fellow Helldiver to fire a weapon,and because these KZfaqrs work alone they started whinging about balance..and in turn their audiences thought the same thing,then said audience gets on Twitter and starts complaining,now Arrowhead get caught up in social media and try to please everyone...well just like"a game for everyone is a game for nobody"you also cant please all the people all the time,Arrowhead need to get off social media for a while and bring in actual playtesters and make the game theyve wanted to make instead of trying to make a game for everyone.

After i got all the strategems and ship modules, i backed off down to difficulty 4-5 to just enjoy playing more casually. I still log in most nights and play the planets for the MO, but im not grinding away like i was as the start. The other problem is theres no way in game to plan strategy across the whole player base. You have to use discord but not everyone is there. As an example with the current MO, bugs are launching attacks on the MO planets from Gacrux. If the player base takes Gacrux then those other MO planets are now completely safe for the duration of the MO. But theres no way to organise the players to take a planet thats not specified in the MO.

Doesn’t help they went on a 3 week vacation and the game still isn’t fixed. Take that shit after you balanced the weapons and made things fun again, color pallets, drum mags etc. The big patch did nothing to help lvl 8 or above so it’s basically the same damn 3 weapons and stratagems.

It's also be cool if each stratagem and weapon had a few upgrade choices like in Deep Rock Galactic, just so you always feel like your progressing and have more options in things you take in

As I and many of us knew, this would happen, whenever everyone is hyped about something and get their hands on it, lasts a few months... you can tell a game will have a big fall of players when there is a hype month were everything we talk is about it, humans get bored because of this constant talk. Look at Baldurs gate too, the supposed game of the year, and i havent seen a single video pop up about it in monsths, and even tho others are more popular they still got this, like lethal company tho i keep seeing content about it.

my biggest issue and what's slow down my play amount each day is I am max on all medals, samples and money. my progress is only on xp which does nothing for me. If they do something that will give us a reason to play more that will likely help a bit. only time I am playing more is when new war bond is out but that's only going to last me a week. so yea we need something to keep us playing our progress is limited since we can't earn anymore items from playing. They can reward us with other items or even make it so new weapons come in parts where we use items earn from playing to build them.

My playtime went down too. Nobody on my friends list is on anymore. The group I routinely dive with have drastically cut down their gametime. The one friend i do play with that is a firm regular, I have to convince the rest of my friends to "chaperone" us to squad up thanks to the broken social menu. We inadvertently "remove friend"-ed each other trying to frantically rejoin our squad after various crashes. Arrowhead seems to refuse to fix their social menu, and I just don't want to dive into higher difficulty missions with randos. We even put in IT tickets to AH directly, and they just cannot fix it.

I ditched the game a while ago. Their launch was abysmal in terms of being a service and they just kept making bad decisions. Bad balance decisions, PR flubs, the Sony debacle... They had so much goodwill and they took nearly every opportunity to squander it.

Starship troopers extermination has that exact mission. Going underground into the hive and making the heck out of it. Would be cool to see something like that in Helldivers

I can not finish any 40m mission due to overheat. None of the other games I play has this problem

I’m getting over helldivers. They release glitchy stuff because they don’t play the game, the discord moderators are so woke that they ban people who don’t align with their ideology, and the game is getting stale. Give us more biomes, missions, enemy types, and just anything to mix it up. Grinding is fun but jeez give us some variety.

I'd take being able to use resources to upgrade primary weapons over adding any new primary weapons in a heart beat. It gives something more for people to work towards and it's just fun. It would be a good reason to add new difficulty levels as well.

I'm not worried. Content is fairly repetitive at the moment but they slowed it down to work on balance more. Plus Elden Ring DLC just came out, which I would argue is the bulk of the missing players, myself included. I'll come back to this game when it's convenient to do so.

They need to do a helldivers 2.1 update. They need to do an expansion adding several strategems, a handful of new armors with unique passives, new guns, and grenade types. All at once. Then add another 50 levels to cap at 200. The trickle release schedule will kill this game. One new mildly exciting warbond every two months is too slow and people will get bored. They are already getting bored. They need a massive update that isn’t just balances. It’s LIVE SERVICE. People live service games are supposed to do constant large content drops. Look at any of the major live service games that are big rn. Even apex which has horrible support imo dropped a whole new game mode, a new collection event, bug fixes, and balance updates for a mid season update. Not even a new season. Fortnite does massive changes. Warzone has pretty sizable ones too, and all those games are free and solely rely on cosmetic sales. There is genuinely no excuse for a game that costs $40 to start and still has micro transactions to not give more content than what they are doing.