Helldivers 2 player thinks one feature from prequel could solve primary weapon balance issues

Helldivers 2 seemingly can’t catch a break regarding balance issues. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to make everyone happy with weapon balance, but one player claims to have a solution: weapon upgrades as seen in the first Helldivers game.

The player shared what they found in Helldivers 1, which a majority of Helldivers 2 players may not be familiar with, and claimed that the prequel had one feature that solved all primary weapon issues. “This is the exact solution that we need for the sequel,” the player wrote in a May 14 Reddit thread and posted a list of upgrades for the Liberator AR, Sorcher Plas, and the Sickle. For example, the Liberator AR could be upgraded to get more melee damage and range, better recoil when shooting on full auto, and expanded magazine capacity.

“Having perks to upgrade the weapons further would allow the primaries to have more power creep over time and we could spend our requisition slips to upgrade them,” the thread’s creator added. And that would make sense: Weapons could have base versions that aren’t too powerful or even outright unviable in high-level play. Then, players could grind through challenges or perhaps developer-designed unique Major Operations aimed at gathering weapon parts or blueprints, and thus enable said weapons to become viable through gameplay.

A player replying to the thread said the addition of a weapon upgrade system would astronomically increase their play time for at least a month. Grinding weapon upgrades may seem like a tedious idea at first, but if done correctly, it could potentially add an extra reason to try out new things and make you come back to the game every once in a while.

Helldivers 2 weapons are becoming increasingly more difficult to balance, with controversial changes to popular guns cropping up in every patch. Most recently, players were gutted to see how dramatically nerfed the R-36 Eruptor and the Crossbow were. Those aren’t the only examples, either, and Arrowhead is trying hard to appease everyone, with even the studio’s chief executive making an “internal push” for better balancing.