Helldivers 2 needs a higher difficulty, creative director agrees, after latest buff update

Helldivers 2 received its latest update yesterday, which vastly improves players’ weapons and changes the balance of the game in their favor.

However, players still aren’t completely satisfied and are asking for a new, harder difficulty setting to compensate. And Arrowhead Creative Director and CEO Johan Pilestedt agrees.

A fan of Helldivers 2 responded to Pilestedt’s call for feedback on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “Everything is great, but we need a new, harder difficulty now.” Pilestedt simply responded, “I agree!”

As part of the balance overhaul, many primary weapons have received a damage increase, larger magazine sizes, or shorter cooldowns, while support weapons and Stratagems have received significantly increased damage.

Additionally, the partial damage dealt to enemies has been increased, and Helldivers now take less damage from headshots.

“With these changes, along with an upgraded Helldiver arsenal, enemy adjustments, and more consistent damage, the overall difficulty may decrease slightly. We’ll be monitoring this closely and listening to the community for your feedback,” the developers wrote in the update’s extensive patch notes.

The update also includes a new Galactic War feature that displays strategically important assets on the map, a new Emote Wheel feature, and other changes and bug fixes.

In addition, the update has resulted in an increase in the number of players.

In May we reported that the game’s concurrent player count had dropped significantly, with average player counts dropping by 62 percent.

Yesterday, with the release of the update, Helldivers 2 peaked at 68,380 players (according to SteamDB). That’s a far cry from the 458,709 peak concurrent players on launch day, but still double the number of players from the past few months.